In Uganda, agricultural schemes introduced irrigation and rice mostly in
the late 1960s and early 1970s. Three projects were implemented by the Chinese
cooperation, reproducing the state farm model of the Mao era. Those schemes
quickly fell aside as the country entered a prolonged period of political
instability and violence. At the time, the “Green Revolution” was the dominant
paradigm behind agricultural policies. In Sub-Saharan Africa, most of the large
irrigation schemes were quickly considered as failures by the development
sector as they did not meet expectations. Thus, most of them were either abandoned
by international donors and states starting the 1980s or privatized, following
structural adjustment plans. Agriculture was no longer a priority. Rather, it
was left to the private sector which, according to the dominant liberalism
paradigm, would be more efficient to integrate rural producers to market – thus
stimulating an economic growth to their benefice2.

However, since early 2000s, such schemes are once again becoming a significant public action among African countries, including in Uganda3. This paper, therefore, aims at understanding this revival of interest, a perspective at the crossroads of political ecology and political agronomy, in order to enlighten the current boom of projects previously considered as failure in the development sector.

Land, water and wetlands policy-making

Reconstructing the state

When Yoweri Museveni took over power in 1986, the country entered the longest period of relative peace and political stability since independence in 1962. Indeed, the new state experienced its first crisis a few years after independence when the Prime Minister Obote Milton, native of the northern Lango region, declared himself life President. Forcefully establishing a new Constitution, he militarized the exercise of political power in the new nation. In 1971 he was overthrown by the General Idi Amin, another northerner of the West Nile region, whose violent and chaotic dictatorship would lead the country’s economy to collapse. Obote’s comeback to power after allegedly rigged elections initiated a new conflict called the bush war. During this conflict, Museveni became the main opponent, using an anti-north discourse to rally southern groups to his cause. Eventually, the National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) he was leading took over Kampala in 1986. NRA’s violent and coercive rule sparked limited civil wars in few northern regions4, including the war against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)5. Consequently, the new NRM government took the lead of a divided, economically ruined country, whose state functions had collapsed, and whose population was mostly forced into subsistence activities

Therefore, it appeared essential for Museveni to gain the financial
support of international donors to carry out the reconstruction process. At the
time the concept of “good governance” was rising among international donors,
linking together the state and institutional building process with efficient
market economies and peace in a neo-liberal perspective. Consequently,
rebuilding the Ugandan state with constitution-making came alongside structural
adjustment plans’ implementation.

Political struggle for a new land
policy

Alongside dependency on aid and the extraversion
which followed, the constitution-making process became an arena for distinct
groups to raise their voices. Under pressure, the government abolished Idi Amin’s
decree under which land was a nationalized resource. With both political
opposition groups, who sought after recognition of their own indigenous land
tenure systems, and international donors, for whom economic growth would come
from private investments requiring access to land under freehold, Uganda
eventually became one of the first Sub-Saharan countries to recognize plurality
of land tenure. These include freehold, leasehold, the mailo system specific to the influential Buganda kingdom, and
customary land tenure system. This was considered a political failure for
Museveni, who wished to control land as the first economic resource in an
agrarian society6. Since then land remains at the core of power relationships, the
government’s attempts to amend the Constitution and struggles among all actors.

Moreover, with the implementation of the structural
adjustment plans, agricultural public action was left aside for private actors
to stimulate thanks to a liberalized environment. Consequently, the Ministry of
Agriculture (currently named the MAAIF for Ministry of Agriculture, Animal
Industry and Fisheries) went through significant reforms and saw its budget and
staff drastically reduced. As most donors during the 1990s ignored agricultural
policies, the Ministry lost power and influence while others, such as the
former Ministry of Natural Resources, rose according to the donors’ attention
of the moment.

Transnationalized water and
wetlands policies

While elaborating legal frameworks regarding land turned out strategic and political struggle, it was not the case with all resources. Neither water nor wetlands were subject to similar power balances. Nevertheless, the Water Act and the Wetlands Statutes, established during the 1990s, showed willingness to gain the support of the international community. Indeed, those policies are inspired by the international documents produced at and after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Thus, some of the Water Act articles are articles of Agenda 21. A significant number of articles of the Wetlands Statutes are directly inspired by the Ramsar Convention of 1971. Moreover, between 1987 and 1997, Uganda ratified about eight major international conventions, illustrating the willingness of the government to be part of the international community and gaining financial support from it by adopting it concepts and models.

The transnationalization of the water and wetlands public action is also
not a dynamic free from political influence. The boom of the water for
sanitation sector that appeared during the 1990s in the development sector,
with the acceptance on the Ugandan side of the main tools then internationally
conceptualised, led to the emergence of an influential Ministry of Natural
Resources (currently named MWE for Ministry of Water and Environment). On the
other hand, while the “ecologization” of public policies was at the heart of
international meetings at the time, implementation was lagging behind. This was
reflected directly through the state building process in Uganda, which created
an environment management authority but lacked the means to implement adopted
policy and regulations. Eventually, elaborating legal frameworks for natural
resource management such as wildlife, forest reserves, and wetlands, was
inspired by the paradigm of conservation. In Uganda, land control is not
unrelated to those policies. Though the government became a trustee of most of
those resources – wetlands among them belonging to citizens for instance – it
quickly acted as an owner, including for land grabbing cases or more simply in
a strategy to build on legitimacy and state authority.

Although the NRM regime was initially popular, its credibility started
to decrease as it failed over time to respond to hopes it previously rose. The
establishment of a transparent democracy did not happen. At the opposite, it
took ten years before Museveni consented to hold elections under the no-party
system, which lasted until 2005. While the economic reforms seemed to kept
inflation under control, allowing Uganda to reach one of the highest and
longest lasting period of economic growth at the time in Africa, most of the
population felt left out. Eventually the good economic results faded as
inequalities deepened. Discontent grew toward an increasingly authoritarian
government that failed to build a state outside patronage system, but rather
used its power to maintain its leader and its position7.

In one attempt to satisfy the population’s demands, a revival of “pro-poor” agricultural policies has appeared since the late 1990s, aimed to improving the livelihoods of a large sector of the population living in rural areas and/or that depends on agriculture. The ideology mobilised by those policies is the promotion of agriculture based on commercial principles, often called “agri-business”, relying on a value-chain approach and the private sector. In line with this, the FIEFOC (Farm Income Enhancement and Forest Conservation) programme was launched in 2008, mostly to “rehabilitate” irrigation schemes implemented in the 1960s-70s and late 1990s. Reinforcing state authority and legitimacy by forcefully producing new territories, using such projects to capture reluctant people’s votes in time of elections, are some of the underlying strategic issues of the FIEFOC programme8, renewed in 2015 as FIEFOC-2 to build five new irrigation schemes.

However, “rehabilitating” came with land issue, a resource disputed at all scales. Indeed, land ownership constitutes a legal vacuum ignored by the government as the state forcefully imposes schemes in wetlands or on customary land, to name a few. This attitude is mostly perceived as land grabbing, fuelling conflicts and distrust within populations as well as toward the government. On the top levels, land ownership is deliberately left out from current policy-drafting in irrigation, allowing the government as well as donors not willing to deal with such sensitive issue to go on9.

Adopting the development sector’s
discourses…

Particularly since the 2008 crisis, food
sovereignty has been back at the core of numerous policies. Irrigation schemes
are introduced one more time as solutions in the development sector. They are
not only once again expected to allow reaching higher level of production, but
also shifting from subsistence to commercial agriculture. Commodification and
increase of production are the response to securing food production though
weather hazards, in a neo-liberalised vision of agriculture and natural
resource management. As agriculture is back among international donors’
priorities, mostly since the 2000s and with the promotion of “climate-smart”
agriculture, the elaboration of climate change as a problem and the revival of
irrigation schemes as a solution are under significant influence of donors, and
therefore tightly linked to extraversion.

As irrigation schemes are also costly agricultural development projects, governments willing to develop such public action need to capture international financial manna. Therefore, transfers of management models regarding climate change and water sector approaches illustrate the capability of the MWE in Uganda to adopt dominant tools and re-use them as a strategy to attract mandates under their wing. Thus, the MWE became since the 1990s, with the boom of the water for sanitation sector, a powerful actor. Nowadays the development of integrated catchment area approach, which mostly came alongside the establishment of the Nile Basin Initiative, and climate change related tools such as the National Action Adaptation Programmes of actions (NAPA), are successfully instrumentalized by the MWE to attract mandates in the irrigation sector or by the President himself in a populist communication strategy through mainstream media.

Sketch published in The Independent, a prominent Ugandan news magazine (November 4-10, 2016)

Thus, adopting dominant paradigms of the
development sector contributes to justify the costly and mediatized new public
action for irrigation to meet productive goals. The FIEFOC and FIEFOC-2
programmes, funded by loans mostly from the African Development Bank (AfDB)10, opened the way to more
significant actors who now wish to fund and/or build their own irrigation
schemes: among others, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA),
the World Bank, the Islamic Bank of Development, and private companies under
public-private partnerships are now in the game, each one with its own interest
and logic.

… to attract the financial manna The boom of the irrigation sector not only serves political issues previously highlighted but is also deeply embedded into the patronage system. Indeed, in the absence of elaborated legal framework for irrigation, the MAAIF was firstly the executive agency of the FIEFOC programme. However, the Ministry of Agriculture has been significantly under-staffed since the structural adjustment plan period. Coupled with the rising importance of irrigation schemes in terms of expenditures and political interests, a presidential directive led to a shift of the FIEFOC mandate at the advantage of the MWE

Though achievements of the FIEFOC programme were questionable, the MWE remained the executive agency for FIEFOC-2. As the sector developed, intestinal struggles between the MAAIF and the MWE over mandates increased, illustrated by contested bids to control the drafting process of the irrigation policy and the national irrigation master plan. In the absence of an irrigation authority, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) is supposedly acting as a referee. However, its interests can also be questioned. Indeed, the choice of consulting and construction companies by the MWE seems to be linked to top-level civil servants of the MWE and to the immediate entourage of Museveni as well – for the latter, a construction company having its ban lifted shortly after unofficially getting, amongst others, a new contract through FIEFOC-2. Meanwhile, another significant private company, encouraged by the President himself during business meeting, is currently under negotiations with the Presidential office to establish private-public partnerships for unprecedented large-scale irrigation schemes close to the Tanzanian border and in the northeastern Karamoja.

Nevertheless, the MAAIF still finds its way to attract mandates, mostly due to its long collaboration with the Japanese cooperation, though at a lesser extent. After a decade of focus on the rice sector and small-scale irrigation in the East, the JICA eventually conducted several feasibility studies, partly due to rising political pressure. For instance, the MAAIF is the executive agency for the implementation of the Achomai (80 million of USD) and the Namatala schemes (27 million of USD), funded respectively by loans of the AfDB and of the Korean Exim bank, both projects being based on the JICA studies but left aside by the Asian agency due to potential high level of conflicts. The MAAIF is also the privileged partner of the JICA concerning their grant of the 600 hectares Atari scheme, and of the Islamic Development Bank to which they applied for a loan to extend the existing and privately run Kibimba scheme (34 million of USD). While the MWE adopts a discourse based on climate change and integrated water management, the MAAIF rhetoric is based on the value chain and “agri-business” approaches inherited from the 1990s and reinforced since the 2000s.

Conclusion

In the 1970-80s the reasons why
irrigation schemes were considered as failures mostly lies in
overly-technocratic conceptualisation, disconnected from the local dynamics,
imposed from a top level ignorant of the pre-existing socio-economic structures
present on the ground. Lack of local participation was pointed out, as well as
the prominent political issues. In today’s Uganda, the booming irrigation
schemes do not seem to demonstrate any change in terms of practices.

The ideologies justifying such projects – now embedded in a wide neo-liberal vision of agriculture and resource management – are indeed new (climate-smart agriculture, integrated catchment areas management, value chain approach). However schemes’ conceptualization, as in the 1960s-70s, remains a technocratic process led at top level, excluding decentralised agencies and driven by interests hardly similar to the ones of the populations left to cope with the imposed schemes. Soft-components, though initially designed, are hardly implemented. The high level of corruption in the sector leads to incomplete or over-extended rehabilitations, while funders as governmental agencies ignore their unexpected and/or unwanted results. Moreover, the revival of interest for irrigation schemes leads to the multiplication of actors willing to enter the sector, and to different governmental agencies elaborating their own strategies to attract mandates. Eventually, those irrigation schemes, cast as the solution to Ugandan contemporary issues by all actors, are hardly different from the ones conceptualized decades ago. The political issues they serve, however, are specific to the period of Museveni’s leadership: maintaining a patronage system the NRM-state apparatus came to rely on; pursuing a populist strategy based on expressed need for water; controlling populations such as mobile groups or reluctant electorates; and controlling land by ignoring the ownership question at the top level of the government and donors’ community. As such, the contemporary making of the public action for irrigation in Uganda contributes to characterize an approach of the “Development” as a “perpetual present”.

Bibliography

PhD Candidate in Human Geography at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne and Affiliated Researcher at the Centre for Basic Research, Kampala. This paper is based on a fieldwork of 27 semi-directed interviews conducted between September and December 2017 in Kampala, and part of a wider research project focusing on the agrarian geopolitics of irrigation in Uganda.

1.Rist Gilbert, 2014, The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith. London, Zed Books.

Besides the war against the LRA, most of those groups did not last. They were located mainly in the northern regions of Teso, Lango and Acholi, where massive cattle raids occured in 1986-87 conducted by the NRA itself, by northeastern Karimojong warriors or by the collusion of both. It led to a brutal agrarian shift and distrust against the new government. Later, the war against the LRA lasted until the cease-fire of 2006 and led to the displacement of about two million people in camps as the result of a scorched earth policy

Among others, see the International Crisis Group’s publication in November 2017: “Uganda’s Slow Side into Crisis”, Africa Report n°256, 29 p

For more details, see the concept of hydraulic territorialization developed by Pierpoli Faggi.

To illustrate the impacts on the ground of the northern irrigation schemes, see Torretti Charlotte, 2018/2, “‘In the Name of Development’: Indigenous Resource Management in Irrigation Schemes”, Belgeo, Revue belge de géographie, 22 p.

FIEFOC budget to rehabilitate old schemes was about 18 million USD, while the still on-going Olweny scheme rehabilitation under government’s fund reaches at least 12 million USD. Irrigation-related construction cost under FIEFOC-2 is budgeted at about 70 million USD. An integrated water and irrigation scheme on the Mpologoma river at a 1,3 billion USD cost will be implemented by the Korean Rural Community Corporation

Lewis David., 2009, “International Development and the “Perpetual Present”: Anthropological Approaches to the Re-historicization of Policy”,European Journal of Development Research, n°21, 32-46 pp.

Mega
development projects displaced more than 200 million people in the
20th
century. Terminiski (2012) estimates that 15 million people are
displaced annually by development projects. Although
Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement (DIDR) projects are
justified on the basis of greater good, eviction aggravates poverty
by causing landlessness, food insecurity, lack of access to common
property resources, increased morbidity, and mortality (Cornea, 2000;
Bortolome et al, 2000). Downing (2002) also adds loss of access to
public services, disruption of formal education activities and loss
of civil and human rights as part of the risks. Such values and
benefits are difficult to compute and therefore to compensate, yet
such are the “things people have reason to value” (Sen, 1999).

The
integration of community participation in DIDR projects in the 1980s
was therefore conceived as a strategy for reducing the adverse
effects of such projects. However resistance and controversies still
characterise such projects. This study posits that resistance is part
of the participation process. Resistance often occurs due to the
limitations of formal participation and not lack of it. Using data
collected from the development project of the Yala swamp in Siaya
County, in Western Kenya, this essay argues that disputes are
attributable to four main factors. First, the objectives of
participation by project developers and members of local communities
are at variance. Secondly, the projects often fall short of
expectations. Thirdly, the principle of full disclosure is not fully
observed. And finally, external interests transform the initial
agreements and expectations.

Part
1 of this essay highlights important concepts including
‘participation’, ‘consent’, and ‘resistance’, and gives
insight into the research methodology. Part 2 presents the case of
Yala swamp and its background. Part 3 and 4discuss the research
findings. The main argument is that resistance is an integral part of
participation.

1.
Peoples’ Participation in DIDR

The practice of people’s participation was introduced and formalized in DIDR in the early 1980s (World Bank, 1994; Oliver-Smith, 2001). Participation is a strategy of involving communities in development processes, tapping into their local knowledge, building local capacity, and eventually transferring ownership back to them (Chambers, 2005; Schudder and Corlson, 1982). Among the benefits of participation are community empowerment, civic engagement, and ultimately good governance (Turnhout et al, 2010). Participation in DIDR captures the contradictory characteristics of development. While it is seen as desirable and ‘people focused’, it has become conditional for accessing international funding (White, 1999; Schech and vas Dev, 2007). To potential victims of mega projects, participation is about giving their consent. Staked against the principle of public interest, victims’ consent or refusal carries little wait.

Conceptualizing
‘consent’, ‘conformity’ and ‘resistance’

Consent is an agreement to a proposal; it can also mean approval and willingness to give or to receive. In DIDR literature, informed consent is a requirement that can only be obtained through full disclosure and community participation. However it is noteworthy that there is contradiction
when we use the term consent in involuntary displacement: victims
often have no choice because governments have legal protection in
acquiring private land for public use drawn from the principle of
eminent domain.

Conformity
on the other hand involves group dynamics. Crutchfield (1955) defines
conformity as “yielding to group pressure”. Influence may be
exercised through bullying, criticism, persuasion and teasing.

Resistance is a set of processes of negotiation between actors who operate from particular positions along a spectrum of power relations (Gandhi, 2003: 6). Development projects attract resistance because of the unequal benefits they provide and the losses they incur. This multiplicity of losses and benefits are located in the centre of development chains that embodies different group interests.

Research
methods

The
fieldwork entailed mapping the Yala swamp, the affected populations,
and other stakeholders. We administered semi-structured
questionnaires that we followed with in-depth interviews of key
informants. Respondents included government offices, civil society,
and community leaders. The field notes were then codified along the
themes already identified and also those that emerged during the
fieldwork. Primary documents such as minutes, maps, and
correspondences between different groups were also analysed. The
proposal document by Dominion, a group of companies involved in the
development of the Yala swamp, the government maps, and environmental
impact assessment reports were considered primary documents.

2.
Yala Swamp: Western Kenya Main Wetland

As indicated in figure 1 below, Yala swamp is one
of the major wetlands in Western Kenya. It is located in the flood plains of
River Yala that drains into Lake Victoria, the largest fresh water lake in
Africa. The wetland is one of the most fragile eco-systems (Aloo, 2002). The
swamp stretches 25 km from W-E and 15 km from N-Sat the lakeshore. While the
swamp is extensive, covering about 175 km2 (see legend), the area of concern
covers about 17 500 ha of land. Up to about 1969, the inhabitants treated the
wetland as communal land where people enjoyed only use rights rather than
individual or family ownership. Besides being a source of water, the wetland is
used for crop cultivation, livestock keeping, fishing, harvesting of reeds, and
medicinal plants. Having noticed the potential of the wetland, the government of
Kenya created the Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA) in 1979 with a
mandate to develop and manage resources along the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria.

For better management of the Wetland, LBDA devised
a strategy whereby community members were allocated part of the drained swamp
to cultivate. The only requirement was that people formed a group of ten. The
main aim was to eventually transfer the entire management to the local
community. The current research concentrates on the displacement caused by Dominion
farms since 2003, which changed the arrangement LBDA had with local
communities.F

Figure 1.Yala wetland land context Source: Abila et al., 2003

3. ‘Participation’ in Yala Swamp: Dominion vs. Citizens

Although
participation has become a critical component of development projects,
especially in rural communities and also in projects with displacement
component, this study reveals that community members and project managers have
different and sometimes incongruent perceptions and objectives. According to
project managers and government officials, participation

Photography 1. View of Yala Swamp Source: Anna von Sury, 2015

means securing the consent of
community members faced with displacement. For community members, participation
goes well beyond consent; it concerns the ways in which they will be involved
in the project at several stages and how the project can ultimately transform
their lives.

To secure participation of
members of the community, the company used the existing gatekeepers, including
the church, local administrative structures, and (women) groups. Dominion farms
owners claimed that better living came through Christianity. They established a
church within the area that acted as a meeting place for discussing the project
but also demonstrating to dissenters what could be achieved through giving
consent. However participation of community members was only sought after the
local government had already signed lease agreements. Most residents gave their
consent because they did not have to give up their land. Those whose land was
to be affected objected. Among the respondents, there was a general agreement
that the coming of the company was a positive development, as captured by the
following respondent: “Dominion came in a very positive way and all of us
agreed because we had seen the benefits from LBDA, how I wish we should have
listened to Hon. Martha Karua who was one of the government officers who
opposed it”.2

In line with LBDA practice, the
community members expected to be fully integrated in the project and to take
over after the 25-year lease period.

Promises
to secure consent

Despite the promises that Dominion was going to transform the lives of local community members, events undermined the economic viability of the company and also the practicalities of achieving their objectives. The company promised socio-economic investments in education, health, and infrastructure, including roads. There is a perception that the initial projects that the company implemented were meant only to get their consent or to appease local power brokers. For example, the company promised to build new schools, hospitals, and upgrade the road networks, but this was only partially done. The company instead upgraded the existing schools, which was interpreted as favouring only those already benefiting from public schools.

More contentious was the agreement that each family
unit would be allocated ¼ of an acre for maize cultivation and that the company
would only plant maize for one season as they prepared the fields for rice
cultivation – the main commercial crop. While the company allocated 150 acres
on each side, this was not enough for all the families affected. This resulted
in disputes between groups and also within the company.

Limited information

The total area that the company leased became
controversial. The understanding was that the company would only lease the 2700
ha that had already been drained by LBDA. The lease was for 25 years after
which the management of the wetland would revert back to the locals. However
the lease was quietly extended for 45 years (IFAN, 2010). Secondly, there was a
general understanding that Dominion was to plant rice and no other crops. The
fear was that if the company was to plant other crops such as maize, this would
undermine farming of local crops by the community.

External factors

The activities of the company created economic prospects that triggered rural to rural migration. Community members claim that migrants came from other counties, including Kisumu, especially from Kano, Homa Bay and even Migori and posed unfair competition for jobs and business. The migrant community complicated the common understanding of what ‘local’ means. For example, it had been agreed that the locals would get first priority in case of employment and only specialized personnel would be sourced from outside. Employment of migrants was therefore not wholly welcome. At the same time, Dominion Group of companies seems to have been undergoing some transformations, which entailed the sudden withdrawal of the top management. Secondly, the company faced problems with rice cultivation partly because of cheap rice imports from Asian countries. The pricing of the local rice was slightly higher than the imported rice. In addition Kenya does not traditionally export rice, which meant that the company had to invest in exploring for new markets. This compromised the ability of the company to meet its cooperate social obligations.

4. Development as Resistance, or ‘Development against Development’

While the arrival of Dominion farms was largely accepted at the beginning, failure to meet expectations created discontentment and disagreements. First, benefits and losses were not equally shared. Many interviewees underlined the fact that some people benefited more than others. While the company may have not delivered because of difficult business circumstances, community members pressed for promises to be kept. Although post development theorists (Kothari et al, 2001) argue that participation has been stripped of its transformational values, this study found that community members used resistance as a form of participation. Furthermore they used innovative ways of resistance, which I hereby call ‘developing against development’. Instead of contesting boundaries and fences, people in Yala swamp initiated their own development projects to stop Dominions farms from encroaching in their own farms. Some of these development projects were not meant to evict the company but as forms of bargaining cards, as the following cases will show.

Planting
Eucalyptus trees

Due to the need to drain a larger area than
initially drained by the LBDA, Dominion proposed to increase the height of the
dyke from 3 to 4 metres. While consent was granted for this, the company went
further and increased the height of the dyke to 6.5 metres, bringing in a much
larger area and population under flooding. Individuals who sensed the threat of
flooding of their farms initiated their own development projects including
planting Eucalyptus trees. One of the respondents, Mr Otieno (not his real
name), explained: “the chief told us that we cannot cut trees without his
permission, so I knew the government cares about those trees”. He planted the
trees in 2 acres of his land near the river. This strategy served two purposes:
first, in case he was forced to move, his compensation would be much higher
than if the land was empty; secondly, because of the afforestation programme by
the government, Mr Otieno was aware that the government – through the local
chief and the ministry of Environment and natural resources – would have to be
involved. Farmers nearby also adopted this strategy. By the time of the
research, most of Mr Otieno’s trees were in full bloom. The farmers here have
used tree planting as a barrier to undesired development and a bargaining card.
This illustrates how local community members can actually turn the concept of
development on its head.

Construction
of houses

A number of families resorted to putting up houses as barriers to displacement, though with varying success. The company would occasionally block the slippage that flooded farms and houses near the riverbank. Families with mud-walled or grassed thatched houses were greatly affected. While some of the families had to relocate, some of them stubbornly stayed or just moved a few metres away. This dispute was partly created by the company but also historical. First, by raising the height of the dyke, the company brought more people into the project area. These people did not participate in the initial agreement. They were therefore not part of the compensation plan. Secondly, the company insisted on compensating them at the same rate others were compensated in 2003-6. While in 2003, Kshs. 25 000 (USD 250) could buy land nearby, in 2010 onwards it could not. The historical problem was the claim that the residents had already been compensated by LBDA and more money would result in double compensation.

Cultivation

Although cultivation of vegetables, tubers and fruits is common livelihood strategy among the local community, the dispute between the company and the community members changed this activity from a source of economic income to a resistance tool. Planting banana trees, local vegetables or cabbages near the river was initiated to block the company from expanding

Photography 2: Flooding in the upper part of the swamp. Source: Sofia Von Post, 2006

upstream but also to demonstrate to local
government authorities the type of disregard that the company had of the people
living in the area. One of the respondents lamented: “I can’t grow any of my
usual vegetables or cassava because the fertile part of the land is under water
now”.

Local politics

To insulate themselves from political manipulation, one of the vocal
leaders of the Yala Swamp Association was elected as the local councillor
(Member of County Assembly now). The previous leadership was not considered
vocal enough to push for the interests of the community because he may have
been compromised. Electing one of the leaders of the association was then seen
as enhancing their participation. In this way the project changed the power
dynamics in a way it had not anticipated.

Conclusion

This essay has examined the process of participation in Development induced displacement project in Yala swamp. Like most social processes, participation is imbued with social and political values that serve different groups according to their interests. While formalised participation is meant to achieve objectives of project managers, this study has revealed that informal participation through micro-practices of resistance – characterised by turning common practices on their heads – does bring to the fore some of the salient struggles in development. Unlike the post-development contention that participation has become a tool of domination, local communities have demonstrated that this is not always the case. The several projects erected against Dominion are examples of the ways in which people seek to determine what development is appropriate to them.

Bibliography

Dulo Nyaoro is a PhD candidate in the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. This paper is part of an on-going PhD project on People’s Participation in development-induced displacement and resettlement in Kenya

1. Interview with a resident, 11 August 2017. Hon Martha Karua was the Minister for water and irrigation in 2003

Genesis of an Activist Willy Mutunga hails from a modest background. Born on June 16 1947 in Kilonzo, near Kitui (130 km from Nairobi), he was second in a family of eight children. His parents, of Kamba ethnicity, were illiterate, though his father, a tailor, knew how to count. As a brilliant student, he benefited from family and state solidarity to fund his schooling, which was a common feature during this early independence period when new African states wanted to establish local elite.

He attended Kalawa primary school and later Ithookwe primary school, which were both non-religious institutions. He pursued his secondary school studies in Kitui with the help of a county scholarship. He then joined the prestigious Strathmore high school in Nairobi, the first multi-racial institution of Kenya, founded in 1961. Strathmore was a Catholic school set up and financed by Opus Dei that preached “racial harmony”; there, Willy Mutunga made friends from different backgrounds and communities. “I owe my education to the community,” he emphasizes today. “You can see why I have stayed on that route of humanity and social democracy”.

Since Kenya’s independence in 1963, generations of
activists have followed upon each other. Willy Mutunga is a member of the first
generation – together with Paul Muite or Yash Pal Ghai who fought relentlessly against arbitrary arrests and for multi-partyism and the respect of Human Rights and constitutional reform. Although a discrete man, he often played a key role in these struggles. Like many Kenyan activists, Willy Mutunga is a lawyer by training. In the 1970s, he was admitted at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in Tanzania where he met the committed professors and political activists who shaped his journey. In the early 1980s, at the climax of Daniel arap Moi’s repression, his activist activities led him to prison for more than one year. After defying the system for a long time, he decided to join it with the hope he could contribute to reforming it from within by becoming Chief Justice in 2011. In this capacity, he became an arbitrator in the contested presidential election of 20132

From this period, he has had a deep rejection of Kenya’s widespread “tribalism” and a real curiosity for different spiritual confessions. He was baptized in the protestant faith at 9 years old, but he turned away from that church because its hostility towards traditional animistic practices shocked him. As a college student, he converted to Catholicism before turning to Islam in 1981, seven years after his marriage with his first wife Rukia, who was a Muslim. This spiritual search, which may be perceived as an internal freedom with regards to different religious dogma, made him say that he is “a man of all faiths”, but these words were misunderstood in Kenya and taken up as religious inconsistency. His open and independent personality would find at UDSM the intellectual and political training he thirsted for. In the seventies, UDSM was the “Mecca of Revolution”, Willy Mutunga likes to recall. From South Africa’s Africa National Congress (ANC) to Mozambique’s Liberation Front (FRELIMO), all African liberation movements met there and debated together. The future Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni attended the university together with the Sudanese John Garang. Progressive international
professors, such as Canadian John S. Saul and Walter Rodney, the Guyanese
historian and political activist, also converged there4.

In Dar es Salaam, Willy Mutunga was a diligent participant in the
debates that took place every Sunday, ironically baptized “the Rodney Church”5. He described himself as a “sympathetic
but also a critic” because he was wary of dogmatism. His two stays at UDSM
(1968-1971, then 1973-1974) left a lasting mark on him. “That is the time when
my ideological and political beliefs were shaped”. On his return to Kenya, he
became an activist for social progress, political freedom and Pan-Africanism.

After his Law degree in 1974, Willy Mutunga was immediately recruited as
a Law lecturer at the University of Nairobi (UoN). He joined a world in
constant restlessness against Jomo Kenyatta’s authority, the first president of
independent Kenya, who had imposed a single party system. Every year on 2nd
March, students then commemorated the assassination of J.-M. Kariuki, a very
popular politician, which came to be known as the “J.-M. Day”.

On December 31, 1977, the arrest of Ngugi wa Thiong’o, a lecturer, writer and thinker, reinforced the tensions between the regime and the university. Imprisoned without trial, Ngugi wa Thiong’o stayed in prison for a year and was not allowed to go back to the university upon his liberation. Daniel arap Moi’s ascent to power at the end of 1978, after Jomo Kenyatta’s death, changed nothing. Students and teachers’ mobilisation to obtain Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s reinstatement was organized within a labour union: the University Academic Staff Union (UASU). Willy Mutunga was UASU’s Secretary General. After its banning, in July 1980, UASU continued as a secret organization called the “December 12th Movement”. The publication of a political pamphlet by the movement led to the arrest of Willy Mutunga and many of his colleagues, including the renowned scholar Alamin Mazrui, to whom he remained close. Arrested on 10 June 1982 and interrogated for two days without violence, Willy Mutunga was finally charged with “holding a seditious publication” and arrested without trial. He was detained for sixteen months, without ever seeing his wife Rukia nor his two young children. He could not even attend his mother’s funeral, who passed away during his detention.

The Weapon of Law and Human
Rights

Willy Mutunga decided to study law because, to him, being a lawyer was a “prestigious” profession that offered “future perspectives” for Africans, who had been denied for too long the right to practice it (Ross, 1992)6. At that time, he did not bring up the activist possibilities of the profession, nor promoted any wish to master the “weapon of the law”7 that he would, nevertheless, use later in his career.

Willy Mutunga handcuffed @ Daily Nation

He was released from prison on 20 October 1983; but
having lost his teaching position at UoN, he resumed his career as an advocate –
he had, indeed, briefly practiced at Kitui in 1971 and 1972, after establishing
Mutunga and Co Advocates firm in Nairobi. At the same time, he committed
himself to the Kituo cha Sheria association of legal assistance. These
complicated years were used to reconstruct his personal and professional life
brutally interrupted by imprisonment.

Politically, this period is marked by the hardening of Daniel arap Moi’s
regime despite of all forms of opposition. In 1982, an amendment to the
constitution (section 2A) made Kenya a dejure single party state. After an
attempted coup failed in August1982,
many opponents were arrested, tortured and imprisoned for years. During the
last years of this troubled period, Willy Mutunga decided to “think about the
situation in Kenya”, an objective that made him leave for Toronto in Canada in
October 1989 and pursue a Doctorate Degree in Law. There, he remained a
dedicated activist, connected to the Kenyan diaspora, notably to his former
student in the Law Faculty, Makau Mutua, who had relocated to the United States
in the early 1980s. He witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse
of the communist system which, he emphasized, caused a “shock” for all the
left-wing activists. From 1990, Willy Mutunga joined a small group of Kenyans
who aimed to create a Human Rights organization. According to him, it was an opportunity
for the radical activists to come out of their “ideological confusion”.

The Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC) was registered in April 1992 in Washington, for Kenya was not an option for establishing such an institution. It was presided by Makau Mutua; Willy Mutunga was its Vice President; and Maina Kiai – another Kenyan Law student who was close to Mutua and lived in the United States – was its Executive Director. In
September 1992, the commission moved to Nairobi.

On his return to Nairobi, Willy Mutunga, already Vice President of the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), succeeded the Advocate Paul Muite at the head of the organization in 1993. Established by law, the LSK was a professional organization that united all practicing advocates. Besides the training and the supervision of its members’ professional ethics, its official role was to assist the government and the public with legal matters. Young protesting lawyers interpreted the rather vague formulation of LSK’s role in its widest sense in the early 1990s. Paul Muite and Willy Mutunga quickly understood how useful the LSK would be: it was indeed an organisation independent of the government and sanctioned by a law that prevented its overnight closure, unlike any normal organization. They used the LSK to campaign for the abrogation of section 2A of the constitution and the restoration of multi-partyism.

With his double membership at KHRC (as Vice President from 1992 to 1997,
then as Executive Director from 1998 to 2003) and at the LSK (which he presided
from 1993 to 1995), Willy Mutunga played an essential role in creating a new
Human Rights language in Kenya. He diffused his ideas in particular by means of
op-eds in the Daily Nation newspaper,
along with other activists like Mugambi Kiai , brother to Maina. The KHRC also
published numerous reports, specifically on the situation of political
prisoners or land issues – a crucial problem in the country. The commission got
closer to opposition parties, just like the LSK, which worked in close
collaboration with the FORD opposition party towards the abolition of the
single party state system. This goal was achieved in 1991 but they had to wait
ten more years before witnessing political transition through the victory of
the Rainbow Coalition10 and the
election of its candidate Mwai Kibaki on 27 December 2002. Once again, Willy
Mutunga played a critical role as a facilitator, working with another lawyer,
Kivutha Kibwana. The two of them succeeded in convincing divided opposition
parties to form an alliance promoting democratization and the fight against
corruption.

After the victory of this alliance, the other main objective of this
generation of activists was a constitutional reform; it materialized on 27
August 2010 with the promulgation of a new Constitution, an outcome of two
decades of mobilizations. Willy Mutunga, one of the craftsmen of this text,
could not stop there. He decided to commit himself to the application and
defence of the Constitution by vying for the position of the President of the
Supreme Court.

His candidature was in line with his will not to turn into a “professional critic” – a reproach he had made to some civil society members – and to put in practice his principles. However, this was ambitious. Despite his undisputed honesty and robust legal training, he had never been a judge, was proud of his “radical” activist path, and found himself at that time in a middle of a divorce11 after a hectic private life (he was married twice, and he had two children out of marriage). These things may have displeased the conservative camp of President Kibaki.

However, at that time Kenya was in an unprecedented political situation:
after the post-electoral violence of 2008, Mwai Kibaki shared his executive
power with his opponent Raila Odinga, appointed as the first Prime Minister to
put an end to the crisis. This coexistence played in favour of Willy Mutunga.
After trying in vain to impose his own candidate, Mwai Kibaki finally agreed to
present to the Members of Parliament the candidature of Willy Mutunga, who had
the support of Raila Odinga. In exchange, Keriako Tobiko, close to the
conservative camp, obtained the key position of Director of Public
Prosecutions.

An Outcast in the Society of
Elites

Even with his prestigious position, which made him
one of the most powerful personalities, Willy Mutunga remained on the fringes
of the Kenyan establishment. He did not frequent the luxurious Golf clubs of
the capital, high social places of the political and economic elites12, preferring to spend his
evenings alone or with friends, such as cartoonists Gado and Maddo. Mocked for
his diamond on the ear, he refused to remove it when he became Chief Justice in
June 2011. In a country alternately run by Kikuyus and Kalenjins, with the Luos
stationed in the opposition, he comes from the fifth largest tribe in the
country, the Kamba.

Moreover, he is a Muslim when more than 70% of the
Kenyan population is Christian. His atypical profile made him try other
professional experiences before his ascension to the Presidency of the Supreme
Court. Disappointed by the turn taken by the Kibaki Presidency, he joined the
Ford Foundation in 2004, moving to the donors’ side. He had not absented
himself from the public debates, which he participated through a weekly column
in the Saturday Nation, under the
alias Cabral Pinto – a double tribute to the revolutionary Amilcar Cabral from
Guinea Bissau, assassinated in 1973, and to Pio Gama Pinto, a journalist and a
Kenyan political activist, killed in 1965.

Appointed to the Supreme Court in June 2011, Willy Mutunga did nothing to fit in. Defying the reluctances, he decided to abolish the wig for judges and to change their red robe, both inherited from the colonial years. These measures aimed at showing Kenyans that the justice could come closer to the public. The effect of surprise of his appointment and the relative fragility of an Executive and a Parliament at the end of their service allowed him to put in place certain reforms quickly, like the computerization of the courts or the strengthening of the initial and continuing training for judges. He also introduced a periodic rotation of judges and the opening of many courts in regions that had been up to then totally abandoned by the Judicial Institution. The increase in number of judges and magistrates helped reduce the number of neglected files by half. However, this actual evolution of the judicial institution towards more independence and integrity had its limits. For
the first time in his career, Willy Mutunga evolved in a professional
environment that was widely hostile to him. Some incompetent or corrupt judges
did not want to be pushed around. Known for his capacity of dialogue, his taste
for collective thinking (which he described by the term “collective intellect”),
Willy Mutunga was not at ease with conflictual situations. He witnessed the
most difficult test of his career. In March 2013, the very close results of the
Kenyan presidential election, which gave victory to Uhuru Kenyatta with 50.07%
of the vote in the first ballot, was contested by his opponent Raila Odinga
before the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice and the other Supreme Court Judges
had to take the role of arbitrators of the political life and they were
subjected to immense pressure, considering the fact that five years earlier the
contested re-election of President Mwai Kibaki had led to terrible violence.

After four days of debate, and a long day of deliberation, on 30 March,
Willy Mutunga announced the unanimous decision of six judges of the Court:
despite the irregularities observed, the re-run was ruled out and Kenyatta’s
victory was confirmed. This announcement, which did not come with any legal
explanation (it would be published a month later), was highly criticized by
many members of the civil society, amongst whom were close friends of Willy
Mutunga like Maina Kiai or Makau Mutua, who felt “betrayed” by one of them. In
their eyes, this validation of a spoilt ballot was a very hard blow to the
quite young constitution. The situation remained unpleasant for Willy Mutunga.
Having rejected every criticism at first, he became more at ease and promised
to return on this controversial decision after his departure from the Supreme
Court13. A little after, Willy Mutunga
also had to face a media after one of his close colleagues, in charge of
Judicial Administration (Chief Registrar), Gladys Shollei, was accused of
embezzling funds. She was dismissed from her position in October 2013, with the
approval of the Chief Justice. At the end of 2015, Justice Philip Tunoi, a
Judge of the Supreme Court, was accused of Corruption14 and Lady Justice Kalpana Rawal,
a judge and the Vice President of the Court, was accused of tax evasion during
the revelation of the Panama Papers15.

The Supreme Court and its President were weakened by this series of tests. Especially since the political configuration had changed since 2013, with a new Kenyatta-Ruto Executive in office which was less favourable to the new Constitution. Many laws going against the spirit of the new Constitution were voted by the Parliament, restraining press freedom or hardening financing conditions for certain non-governmental organizations.

In October 2015, Willy Mutunga announced that he
was going to take an early retirement, in June 2016, while he could have stayed
in office for one more year until his 70th birthday.

After that announcement, his words and his actions became freer, to the
point of annoying certain commentators accusing him of having become an
activist again prematurely. He visited the popular Huruma estate after the
fatal collapse of a building, in the company of the youth photographer and
activist Boniface Mwangi17, to whom
he is a mentor. Very active in the Social Media, the Chief Justice also increased
tweets written in Sheng, the English-Swahili slang of the urban youth. He
finally publicly condemned, at the end of April 2016, the police violence
during the Opposition’s demonstrations against the Electoral Commission18. His most spectacular standpoint
dates back to January 2016, when he denounced in an interview on NRC
Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper19, a Kenya
plagued by “Cartels”, a fundamentally corrupt society and a criminal economy,
like America in the 1920’s. “I am on the back of a tiger with the hope of not
being devoured”, he said in that interview, explaining all the difficulty of
transforming the system from the inside. “The influence of cartels is
irresistible”, Willy Mutunga explained, “as long as the cartels are protected,
there is nothing that can be done. These people go through a corrupt
investigation system, a corrupt anti-corruption system and a corrupt judiciary.”
To conclude, “we have become a criminal economy.”

Mentor of the activist youth

Having crossed all the upheavals of Kenya’s
political life and avoided being tainted by any scandal during the five years
he spent as the head of the Supreme Court, Willy Mutunga became more than ever
before a mentor for youth activists. Boniface Mwangi, one of the most prominent
activists today in Kenya, considers him a “comrade”20 in struggle and cites him as one
of the personalities who inspire him in the same way as the Mau Mau leader
Dedan Kimathi21. Willy Mutunga appreciates this role of a mentor that he had already
played for Makau Mutua or Maina Kiai and intends to pursue it just as he wishes
to teach and to travel to share his experience.

Marie Wolfrom is a journalist; she works for AFP (Agence France-Presse) in Paris and was based in Kenya for several years.

Unless otherwise stated, the citations in quotes of this article arises from interviews with the author, realized face to face in February 2014, or through a regular electronic correspondence. The article was written in 2016 and does include recent change.

John S. Saul, born in 1938, is a Canadian activist and a Political Scientist, very committed to the South African Liberation Movements. Walter Rodney, a Guyanese Political Activist and a Historian born in 1942, is the author of the famous How Europe Underdeveloped Africa: A Politicaland Historical Analysis of Underdevelopment (1972).

After Gandhi’s and Nerhu’s activism in India, who were both lawyers, the British colonial authorities refused to give scholarships to African students willing to study Law, a course which was not taught in the first East African University, Makerere. Stanley D. Ross, “The Rule of Law and Lawyers in Kenya”, Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Sep. 1992), p. 421-442.

In the sense referred to by scholar Liora Israël in the Weapon of the Law, Paris, Sciences Po Press, 2009. Online link: http: www.cairn.info/l-arme-du-droit–9782724611236.htm

Ibid, Stanley D. Ross, 1992

He also worked with Willy Mutunga at the Kenya Human Rights Commission.

The National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) converged the National Alliance Party of Kenya and the Liberal Democratic Party.

In July 2000, Willy Mutunga got married for the second time to an American Student, Beverle Michele Lax, whom he divorced in 2011.

Uhuru was not in particular a supporter of the decentralization established by the new fundamental text, and his vice-president William Ruto had campaigned openly for a “no” during the constitutional referendum of 2010.

Boniface Mwangi is a photographer who became known for his pictures denouncing the 2007-2008 post-election violence. He now manages the PAWA 254 organization which converges artists and activists who are involved in the fight for Social and Human Rights.

Koert Lindijer, African correspondent of NRC Handelsblad, published an English version of this interview with Willy Mutunga on the African Arguments website, 11 January 2016.

Interview with the author, February 2014.

Dedan Kimathi Waciuri, born in 1920, was one of the main leaders of the Mau Mau uprising against the British colonization in the 1950’s Captured, he was executed on 18 February 1957. Erased by the official history of the country for a long time, he is today known as one of the independence heroes.

]]>https://mambo.hypotheses.org/1166/feed0“Challenges faced in the resettlement of Internally Displaced Persons in Kenya” By Robert Waweruhttps://mambo.hypotheses.org/1142
https://mambo.hypotheses.org/1142#respondThu, 31 May 2018 14:50:28 +0000http://mambo.hypotheses.org/?p=1142

A girl draws water from an open dam, the only source of water in Makongeni farm @Robert Waweru

This paper examines the initiatives that have been undertaken by the government of Kenya from 2008 to 2016 to address the plight of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) after the 2007/08 post election violence (PEV). The violence erupted after the announcement of Mwai Kibaki as the winner of the presidential election against Raila Odinga.1 Odinga disputed the election outcome, claiming that electoral fraud had taken place and called upon his supporters for mass action. The demonstrations quickly degenerated into politically instigated ethnic violence that was witnessed across the country and was most severe in urban areas such as Nairobi, Naivasha and Kisumu, where supporters of the two candidates engaged in attacks and counter attacks (KNCHR 2008). The Rift Valley was also an epicenter of violence where attacks were mainly directed at the Kikuyu ethnic group for displacement. By 28th February 2008, when Kibaki and Odinga signed the Principles of Partnership after successful mediation by Kofi Annan, over 1300 Kenyans had lost their lives and 650,000 more had been displaced from their homes and their properties destroyed. 310,000 of the displaced persons integrated among communities while the other 350,000 sought refuge in 118 IDP
camps across the country (Muluka 2010: 53). The first initiative, Operation Rudi Nyumbani (Return Home), was the immediate effort made by the Grand Coalition government formed to end the violence with Kibaki as President and Odinga as Prime Minister The second initiative, Operation Ujirani Mwema (Good Neighborliness) and Operation Tujenge Pamoja (Build Together) meant to ensure safe and peaceful environment for the returning displaced persons. Third was the provision of Ksh 10,000 and Ksh 25,000 start-up and reconstructing funds to support the returning IDPs in re-starting their livelihoods. However, not all IDPs were displaced from farms: a significant number were displaced from urban areas and therefore had nowhere to return to. Moreover, not all IDPs were willing to return to places they had been displaced from.They had to be resettled on government purchased lands in several parts of the country including Rongai, Nakuru County, where this study was carried out because of the large number of IDPs that were resettled in the area. According to the government, it seemed convenient for resettlement because of logistical reasons and the availability of large and cheap land. However, I was curious to find out what challenges the resettlement would face given the fact that the host community in this area, the Kalenjin, was the same ethnic community that was responsible for the displacement of many IDPs in the first place. This paper conducts an analysis of the socio-cultural, political, economic and logistical challenges that faced the resettlement process and offer recommendations on how these challenges could have been avoided. It also presents the views of stakeholders in the resettlement process, i.e the IDPs, the government through the National Coordination Consultative Committee on IDPs and the Provincial Administration as well as Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) such as the Kenya Human Rights Commission.

Inadequate funds
After the 2007/08 PEV and the formation of the Grand Coalition Government, the Ministry of Special Programmes (MoSP) was tasked with the mandate of
responding to the plight of the 663,921 IDPs (Kamungi 2009: 355).2 Lack of sufficient funding is the greatest challenge the government faced in its effort to
address the plight of the IDPs. By December 2009, 24,709 IDPs households had not received the Ksh 10,000 start-up capital and 55,725 households had
not received the Ksh 25,000 for the reconstruction (KNCHR 2009: 5). As of July 2010, the government had disbursed Ksh 2,380,170,000 to IDPs and still required an additional 1,161,390,000 to address the cash disbursement. By July 2010, out of the 6802 IDPs households who had land to return to, only 789 households had benefited from the 21/4 acres of land resettlement (GoK, 2010). By the end of 2016, the government had provided the Ksh 10,000 start-up capital to 170,349 households and the Ksh 25,000 reconstruction funds to 37,843 households. A total of 122,245 persons had also benefited from the psychosocio support initiatives. A further 8,784 households been resettled on 20,630 acres of land purchased by the government.3 The cash disbursement process was however criticized by both the IDPs and Civil Society as a process that lacked transparency and accountability.There were allegations of some government officials misappropriated cash meant for the benefit of IDPs.4 Consequently, a majority of IDPs received either the Ksh 10,000 or the Ksh 25,000 with some receiving nothing at all. A beneficiary accounts: “In my household, my wife, my son and I received Ksh 10,000 each. However, I am the only one who received the Ksh 25,000. The others did not receive the Ksh 25,000”.5 On the other end, some IDPs received multiple payments by registering multiple times in multiple places.

Poor records management of IDPs

As mentioned earlier, lack of proper records of IDPs was also a major obstacle in the implementation of these initiatives, especially early on in the process. Before 2007/08, internal displacement was not very common in the country and the government had not been keen in keeping an updated record of displaced persons. Consequently, after 2007/8, the government did not have any clear records on who was an IDP and who was not. Therefore, when the government tried to address the plight of IDPs, it faced a very serious challenge of identifying genuine IDPs and fraudsters. A local Provincial Administrator said: “The process of identifying genuine IDPs should have started at the onset of the resettlement program. The government should have involved the provincial administration to determine who a genuine IDP is and who is not”.6
The area Chief also reiterated: “We endorsed over twenty lists of beneficiaries and we don’t even know which one was used to compensate people. Sometimes individuals who should have benefited should not have while some genuine IDPs who should have benefited did not”.7

Even the National Consultative Coordination Committee on Internally Displaced Persons (NCCCIDP), the national government agency formed in 2013 to coordinate the resettlement of IDPs, admits that at the beginning of the resettlement process in 2008, no clear records were used during the compensation of the IDPs.2

Alleged inequality in the resettlement process.

There is a widespread perception that the government, both the Kibaki/ Odinga’s and the Uhuru/Ruto’s discriminated against IDPs from other parts of the country in the resettlement process by paying more attention on IDPs from the Kikuyu community displaced from the Rift Valley.8 This claim is even held by resettled IDPs who still maintain that they did not receive similar attention as other IDPs.

A Luo IDP complained: “With majority of our people [Luos], when the fracas erupted they went home [Nyanza]. They therefore were not compensated. Us who were compensated are just a drop in the ocean. For example, my brother lost all his property here and there is nothing he got. If you go to where Kikuyu’s were allocated land, you will see how we were neglected. Honestly speaking it was much skewed”.9

Patrick Njagi, the chief executive officer of National Consultative Coordination Committee on IDPs, was however quick to dismisses such an argument and
maintained that the first priority was given to the plight of IDPs who were in the camps, facing a dire humanitarian crisis. Integrated IDPs, those who had
gone back and integrated within their communities were to be addressed in subsequent programs.

Failure to involve and consult with stakeholders

A key provision in all legal frameworks that protect IDPs, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and the Kenya IDP Act of 2012, provides that IDPs should be consulted on any programs undertaken by authorities to address their plight. The government of Kenya has however faced a lot of criticism from IDPs, CSOs and other stakeholders who accused the government of implementing resettlement programs without engaging them in any adequate and meaningful consultation.

A resettled IDP complained of government of unilateralism: “People should be consulted on where they should be resettled. Our resettlement in that place wassomehow forceful. How can you be taken to a place you have never seen? You should be consulted and even counseled that the place you are going to be resettled is pathetic. I was resettled in Majani Mingi but I decided to come back here [Njoro]. Majani Mingi is a very dry area, arid. It is very rocky, you cannot even till it. You can’t
even sell it. It is useless, there is no value addition that you can do on it. In fact, majority of the people resettled there are currently not living there because you cannot till the land. There is no water, there is no rain and no amenities”.10

A house belonging to a resettled IDP in Makongeni but has since been abandoned @Robert Waweru

A Human Rights Officer advises: “The Kenyan Constitution provides for public participation. IDPs are your target audience, if you don’t consult them on a regular basis on how best to address their issues how then do you address their problems?”.11 Mr Patrick Njagi from the NCCCIDP however dismisses such arguments and maintains that it is not practical to resettle all the IDPs in places where each one of them would want. The government urges the resettled IDPs to be thankful for all the efforts the government has undertaken to address their plight instead of always complaining. According to Mr. Njagi, the government has done its best to help the IDPs at the prevailing circumstances and despite all the challenges.

A National Government Official remarked: “Some of those persons complaining that they were not consulted and that the land they got is not good did not even own land in the first place. Instead of being grateful for the piece of land which they can sell and get money to do other business, they are complaining. It is a big challenge getting big, fertile and arable land because the process of buying land is based on a willing buyer willing seller Principle”.12

Lack of social amenities and basic infrastructure
IDPs resettled in Rongai, Nakuru, argued that the government cannot claim to have resettled them. They have the feeling they were just dumped in a place with no roads, schools, hospitals, markets, security, water or any other form of social amenity. The most pressing challenge is the lack of clean water. The only source of water is an open dam that was dug by the government, which is not clean and safe for human consumption.

A girl draws water from an open dam, the only source of water in Makongeni farm @Robert Waweru

Hostility between the IDPs and the host community
The resettlement of IDPs in many parts of the country faced stiff resistance by the local communities who rejected the resettlement of new communities in their
areas.13 The script was not any different in Rongai, as the resettlement provoked hostility from the local community who were mainly laborers working in the sisal farms that had been purchased to resettle IDPs. The local communities argued that the government could not resettle people from other regions such as Western and Nyanza while there were landless people residing in the area.

An IDP resettled in Rongai narrates: “They were not accommodative, they became very aggressive towards us until the government decided to allocate some of them land to appease them. They did not want us there, even now they don’t want us there. In fact, there is a friend of mine who planted maize and the maize somehow did well. He was a Luhya. At night, a host neighbor deliberately grazed his cattle on all the maize and there is nothing the farmer could do. You cannot raise any issue because you are in a foreign land. We are voiceless there.”14

To avoid the problem of hostility from local communities, in 2013 the NCCC on IDPs designed a formula that would see the local communities also get a share of the land. In Rongai, they came up with a 60%-40% formula where the IDPs were to get a 60% share of the land while the local community was to get a 40% share of the land. Mr. Njagi however downplays any such hostility and argues that it is not an attempt by the local community to resist the resettlement of new communities in their areas but that the local host communities also require land: “I cannot call it hostility. What happens is that, there are landless people in every community. Therefore, when they see you bringing people to resettle, they also demand to be resettled too because they too do not have land. It is not an issue of hostilities between communities. What we have done is work on a formula where as we resettle the IDPs we also give a portion of the land to the landless people”.15

Land set aside for the construction of social amenities in Makongeni @Robert Waweru

Politicization of the resettlement process

Politicization of the resettlement process was a big challenge to effective implementation of the resettlement program across the country. Kenyan politics and voting is conducted along ethnic lines that matches with political contests. Therefore, the resettlement of any group of people in a given place alters the ethnic composition of that area and consequently affects the voting patterns, unless the IDPs being resettled are of the same ethnic group as the host ethnic group. Politicians either supported or opposed the resettlement of IDPs in various areas depending on what impact the resettlement would have to their political interests. In Nakuru, a Kalenjin politician would oppose Kikuyu IDPs to be resettled in his/her area because they might vote for a Kikuyu politician. However, if the IDPs were Kalenjin, Kalenjin leaders would support the process because resettlement might increase his/her votes. Where they thought IDPs resettlement would be beneficial to them, local leaders would support the process, but where they thought the resettlement would threaten their political interests, they would oppose often by inciting the host communities against accepting the settlement of IDPs in their areas.16

Conclusion
While the government of Kenya said it “tried its best” to address the plight of IDPs, the implementation of the resettlement initiatives has encountered numerous challenges that negatively affected the effectiveness of the process. This article postulates that the resettlement of IDPs is often a very complicated process that requires proper planning before the implementation of any program intended to provide lasting solutions to IDPs. Consultation and inclusion of the IDPs is key to the success of any resettlement process. The special needs of IDPs do not necessarily disappear immediately after the resettlement. Resettling authorities and other stakeholders should follow up on IDPs because they continue to face difficulties in establishing livelihoods and lack of social amenities such as schools, hospitals and infrastructure particularly pose major challenges. After the numerous challenges experienced with land resettlement, the government of Uhuru Kenyatta subsequently opted to give cash to IDPs for self-resettlement. Eventually from 2016, the government is compensating integrated IDPs, but many structural challenges are yet to be addressed.

1.Kibaki of Party of National Unity (PNU) was a Kikuyu while Odinga of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) was a Luo who enjoyed the support of other ethnic groups like the Kalenjins (Klopp & Kamungi, 2007/2008: 2) More specifically on the PEV and the IDPs, see Kamungi & Klopp, 2007: 52-53.

2 In the Grand Coalition Government, the MoSP was a Kibaki/PNU Ministry headed by Naomi Shaban. However, the Prime Minister

Odinga was in charge of supervising all the ministries and therefore the resettlement was a collective government effort.

Robert Waweru is an alumnus of University of Nairobi holding a Masters Degree in Armed Conflict and Peace Studies and a B.A in Political Science and Conflict & Peace Studies from the same Institution. This paper presents part of his Masters Dissertation’s findings that explored the resettlement of IDPs in Kenya and the challenges that were encountered in the resettlement process.

Muluka Barrack, Internally Displaced Persons and the Dilemma of the Right of Return: A case study of Vumilia Eldoret, Jikaze and Fumilia Narok IDPs in Maai Mahiu in Kenya’s Rift valley province, 2007-2010, University of Nairobi, Unpublished M.A., diss., 2010.

Introduction

Seizure of community land in Uganda by foreign companies for environmental ends – dubbed as ‘green land grabbing’ (Corson & MacDonald, 2012) – is on the rise. As of 2017, several foreign companies acquire concessions to run private wildlife conservancies in Uganda (Tenywa, 2017). While this could be a ‘development opportunity’ (Cotula et al., 2009), deprivation of the rural poor from land in violent ways could stifle development (Deng, 2011). This study contributes to debates on ‘green land grabbing’. It also shows the ways in which the Ugandan state is central in facilitating the enclosure of community land and fostering of capital accumulation by private foreign individuals. Further, it illustrates how wildlife conservation has accentuated marginalisation by divorcing the rural poor from the primary means of production (land). This could rekindle the silent Lord Resistance Army (LRA) conflict[1].

Methodology and study area description

The study adapted a qualitative research design and methodology. The data collection methods included in-depth key informant interviews, focus group discussions (FGD), and review of the concession agreement between the Ugandan government and foreign companies[2]. Interviews and FGDs were conducted with officials from Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) and Lake Albert Safaris Limited (LASL) as well as Amuru and Adjumani districts. In terms of study area, Apaa village is located in Amuru district. It is divided into 42 sub-villages and broken down into 2,500 households with an estimated 17,541 people. Nonetheless, the actual area under contention is ‘home’ to about 2,000 people[3], the majority being subsistence farmers.

Contextualising the green land grab in Apaa district

The contested land in Apaa village has a rooted convoluted history. The LRA conflict displaced the people of Apaa into Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps. However, after the reduction in LRA attacks in 2006, the encamped communities moved to transit sites from where they based to reconstitute the shattered households. Yet the land on which the communities hoped to ‘finally return’ was subject to competing tenure claims. Four entities, that is, UWA, ADLG[4], LASL and local communities claimed ownership of the land in Apaa village. The UWA in collaboration with ADLG gazetted Apaa village as part of East Madi Game Reserve in 2002[5]. On 25th November 2009, two government entities – UWA and ADLG – signed a 20-year management concession with LASL[6]. At the time of writing, LASL managed East Madi Game Reserve, which according to the UWA and ADLG, includes Apaa village and the adjacent areas. The Principal Wildlife Officer of the Ministry of Tourism, Wildlife and Antiquities in Uganda justified the actions of the state and the need for conservation through sport hunting by noting that:

Sport hunting is an innovative approach to conservation. Sport hunting tourism is condemned as an immoral act but as a Ministry we appreciate its use. It is a business which adds more value on the wildlife and generates income. Sport hunting tourism is lucrative as it targets ‘high end tourists’; people with a lot of money that they can spend on hunting for pleasure. It is also an innovative way of ensuring that the species which are threatened increase and is a good way of dealing with problematic animals.[7]

Sport hunting contributes to income in the remote areas of Uganda where LASL operates. Sport hunting provides employment to local communities where the hunting takes place and the animal population is controlled. Some people say that sport hunting is bad, but the animal is killed in less than ten minutes. The client takes the skin and the horns. The meat is given to the local communities. The client pays a lot of money for the privilege of hunting. For every animal taken [killed] we generate about 6,000 USD but the local hunters obtain only 30,000 Uganda shillings [$12] from the sale of meat after hunting an animal for the whole day. You can compare the benefits. [8]

Although sport hunting and conservation were validated based on ‘presumed’ economic returns, the local communities argued that conservation cannot be undertaken at the expense of people’s livelihood and on private property. The land is held customarily and is not part of East Madi Game Reserve. The people authenticated their land tenure claims by presenting land titles and lease hold certificates. For instance, the family of Olensio Obur presented the land title of their land.[9] Similarly, the family of Jusafino Ojok – an elder in Apaa village – presented a copy of the lease agreement.[10] Community members who neither had land titles nor leasehold certificates made reference to particular histories in an effort to validate their land ownership claims.

Meanwhile other community members made reference to the rooted migration patterns and family settlement histories by pointing to how and when they occupied Apaa village. A 55-year old man who was evicted from Apaa village and was residing at Pabbo sub-county at the time of fieldwork recounted:

If we are looking at the history of the land we have to realise that right before the colonial period, we were already living in Apaa. I was born in Apaa in 1958. But even then, other people were already living there. The gentleman referred to as Alensio Obur was sent there as a Jago [Parish Chief] by the colonial administration. We paid graduated taxes to Gulu district and censuses were held in Apaa village.[11]

The son of Alensio Obur whom the above informant referred to claimed that:

My father, an old man called Olensia, led his family to Apaa in 1972. He was not the first to go there, he just followed and joined other relatives many of whom already lived there like my fore-fathers, grandfathers and great grand fathers who lived, died and were buried there. We lived there until we were forced into the camp by [Joseph] Kony in 1996. We obtained a land title on our land in Apaa village.[12]

Timelines of cycles of displacement in Apaa village

The local communities of Apaa village have been evicted from the land on numerous occasions with the sole purpose of paving way for its alienation to Lake Albert Safaris Ltd. Details of the evictions are provided on Fig. 2.

Whereas UWA has variously evicted the people of Apaa village from their ‘ancestral and customary land’, a South African national was allocated the land to operate a privately-run sport tourism facility. The Ugandan state and the embedded institutions have employed forceful approaches to protect the interests of foreign capital while keeping the peasants and smallholder farmers off the land (Shivji, 2006; Harvey, 2003). The processes of appropriation similar to those carried out in Apaa village vividly indicate that the state is the ‘prime agent in the politics of accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2003, 189). Dispossession of the rural communities of their land was undertaken by the state institutions including UWA, Uganda Police and the military. These institutions did not only safeguard the interests of LASL but also violently brought peasant modes of production to an abrupt end. This case shows that land grabbing is not conducted through clear-cut processes but unclear and convoluted mechanisms that involve backdoor deals and kickbacks. But what has been the reaction of the local people?

Responses by local communities

The local communities responded in overt and covert ways: some people continue to occupy their land despite the numerous evictions, while others petitioned their MPs and the MLHUD[14]. Also, on 3rd February 2012, the locals and MPs from the area filed a case against UWA and the Government of Uganda at the High Court in Gulu district. The key argument was that local people are the rightful owners of the land, and that UWA violated their rights to ownership of land as enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda which states that land belongs to the people (Government of Uganda, 1995). On 10th February 2012, the High Court sitting at Gulu issued a temporary injunction which instructed UWA and its agents or servants to stop “further eviction, destruction, confiscation or conversion and or interfering with the land rights, occupation and uses of land belonging to the [local communities] in the areas of Pabbo and Apaa in Amuru district, pending the determination of the main suit”.[15] Despite this, police and military personnel continued to occupy the area. They blocked the communities from rebuilding the destroyed livelihoods following the violent evictions. As of 2017, some of the evicted people relocated to other areas of Amuru district, while those with no alternative places to relocate returned to the contested land. LASL provides limited sport hunting services in the uncontested parts of Apaa village. The situation remains tense and unclear with no immediate end of the contestation in sight. In the next section, I examine some of the impacts.

Impacts of the evictions on the local communities in Apaa village

Destruction of property

I had crops like sorghum, millet and maize. Some of it was already harvested but part of it is [was] still in the gardens. Some of the crops were burnt and some crops looted. My house was physically pulled down by the security forces. After the eviction, I together with my family was brought here at Pabbo sub-county without food or shelter. The lucky few are squatting with relatives, but I do not have any, so I am here at the sub-country with my family waiting to return to Apaa village,[16 ]

explained a 37-year old informant at Pabbo sub-county, where he sought shelter after the eviction.

The excerpt above shows the extent of the destruction arising from one of the many violent evictions. Further, the 13 February 2012 evictions resulted in destruction of the only community built and managed primary school in Apaa village. While the building was turned into a police unit thereby blocking the pupils from attending classes, school furniture was used as firewood by state agents. Children were denied access to education. Also, “enclosure induced displacement” processes (Araghi, 2009 : 112) disrupted the social networks which the children had built within the school environment and surrounding communities. Denial of access to education to a community that was displaced for over twenty years implies further disempowerment and an “uncertain” future for the children themselves and their families.

The borehole in Apaa village which, according to the local communities, was the only source of “good” water was destroyed by the game rangers and wardens, and the military personnel. The people who returned to the area claimed that they suffered from water-borne and water-related diseases which followed the use of unclean water collected from alternative water sources, mainly streams, as the borehole was destroyed. Relatedly, the women complained of the long distance they have to walk to alternative water sources.

Loss of life and imprisonment of youths

In 2011 when the UWA came to pull down women and children suffered. On the day when the people’s homes, it was during the rainy season. So evictions were carried out, two women went into labour, but one mother died after delivery and the child also died moments later because the child was born in the open and there was no shelter to protect her from the rain and the cold. One boy called Oyat was arrested at 7 am and they detained him until 7 pm. But all this time he was enduring beatings. In Apaa trading centre, 6 men were arrested and locked up in a hut while naked.[17]

Loss of rights to land

The allocation of land to LASL resulted in the loss of land rights for the current and future generation. Many argued that land is the only resource that they have as a people given that all resources were lost during the LRA conflict. Indirectly, loss of land means disruption of rural livelihoods and survival. The Constitution of the Republic of Uganda, 1995 and the Land Act, 1998 indicate that compensation should be paid whenever the local communities are deprived of their rights to land, and restitution be considered especially in post-conflict areas when repossession of land and property is not possible to realise. However, compensation and restitution have not been considered as options whenever the repossession of property is not possible.

Conclusion

Appropriation of community land for nature’s sake through direct and indirect methods is increasing. The direct processes involve the violent expulsion of peasants with full support of the state and its institutions. The Ugandan state has facilitated the conversion of community land into a private commodity, a process which Harvey (2003) dubbed accumulation by dispossession. Meanwhile, indirect processes involved the use of state policies to accentuate the privatisation of community land. In both processes, it is the local people who are affected. Conversion of community land into exclusive property rights for sport hunting and environmental purposes has suppressed people’s rights to land. Also, it has disrupted subsistence forms of production, disoriented social networks that were under reconstitution after over twenty years of encampment, interfered with the processes of household and livelihood restoration and resulted in loss of life. This has created a new category of ‘environment-related Internally Displaced Peoples’.

[1] The Lord’s Resistance Army conflict headed by Joseph Kony started in 1986 after the ruling National Resistance Movement government took over power in Uganda. It displaced over 2 million people for more than 2 decades. As of 2017 all the displaced people had returned to their homes, but repossession of their original land continues to be a mystery for many.

[2] Records at the registrar of companies in Uganda show that LASL is a Ugandan registered company owned by two South African nationals.

[3] Extracted from the book containing household data that was obtained from the Apaa village Local Council one (LC1) chairperson, 27/05/2013.

Bibliography

Araghi, F. “The invisible hand and the visible foot: peasants, dispossession and globalization”. In: A.H. Akram-Lodhi and C. Kay, eds. Peasants and globalization: political economy, rural transformation, and the agrarian question. London: Routledge, (2009): pp.111-46.
Corson, C. & K. MacDonald. “Enclosing the global commons: the convention on biological diversity and green grabbing”, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, no. 2 (2012): pp. 263-283.
Cotula, L., Vermeulen, S., Leonard, R., & Keeley, J. Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa, IIED, FAO and IFAD, (2009), available at: http://www.ifad.org/pub/land/land_grab.pdf (Accessed May 8 2013).
Deng, D. “Land belongs to the community’: Demystifying the ‘global land grab’ in Southern Sudan”. Sussex: The Land Deal Politics Initiative (2011), available at: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/r4d/PDF/Outputs/Futureagriculture/LDPI-WP-04.pdf (Accessed March 18 2013).
Government of Uganda. Constitution of the Republic of Uganda. Entebbe: Government Printery (1995).
Harvey, D. The new imperialism. Oxford University Press, (2003).
Shivji, I. Let the People Speak: Tanzania Down the Road to Neo-liberalism. Dakar, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, (2006).
Tenywa, G. Investors want seven concessions. Kampala: New Vision, (2017).

Biography

Eria Serwajja is a Lecturer at the Development Studies Department of Makerere University, Uganda.
He holds Master of Philosophy Degree in Development Studies from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Urban Planning from Makerere University. His research interests include land and agrarian transformation, large and small-scale land grabbing, the extractive industry
including oil and gas, and small-scale artisanal mining.

Contact: eria@chuss.mak.ac.ug

]]>https://mambo.hypotheses.org/1119/feed1The Lands Use Plans And The Villages’ Subdivisions In The Global Land Rush: The Case Of The Ruipa Site In The Kilombero Valley, Morogoro Region, Tanzaniahttps://mambo.hypotheses.org/1067
https://mambo.hypotheses.org/1067#commentsFri, 02 Feb 2018 12:17:30 +0000http://mambo.hypotheses.org/?p=1067

The main road flooded by KPL plantation overflow, leading to the villages concerned by the 2008 land grab. Picture: Adriana Blache

Adriana Blache, ” The Lands Use Plans And The Villages’ Subdivisions In The Global Land Rush: The Case Of The Ruipa Site In The Kilombero Valley, Morogoro Region, Tanzania”, Mambo!, Vol. XV, (1), 2018.

Introduction

In Tanzania, the struggle for space and resources is embedded in a long history of accumulation by dispossession, shaped by a large web of multi-scalar powers of exclusion. Tanzania is considered a country rich in natural resources, with considerable ‘idle’ and ‘unexploited’ lands by international and national institutions. The former concepts are taken up locally by those who help implement estates, and rhetorically in advocacy discourses during negotiations. In the Kilombero district, more than 80% of the land that covers the Kilombero valley and the surrounding mountains are already enclosed for environment conservation, mining extraction, hydro-power plants or large-scale plantations purposes. Nevertheless, the SAGCOT (Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor) program identified 182,198 ha (28% of the village lands) “that could be offered for investment” (SAGCOT, 2012b: 12). On top of that, a complex and institutionalized land demarcation and valuation process is being undertaken: from the introduction of the Certificate of Customary Rights of Occupancy in 2004, the Land Use Planning Act No. 6 of 2007 which “provides procedures related to the preparation of village land use planning in a sustainable and participatory manner” (ibid, 2013: 126), the Tanzania-G8 Land Transparency Partnership (TLTP) in 2013, to the Land Tenure Support Program (LTSP) launched in partnership with the Denmark’s development cooperation (DANIDA), the British Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) in 2016, several huge and heavily-financed programs aim at formalizing land rights and clarifying village borders and plans.

In this paper, I will focus on the Ruipa Site, one particular area of the valley which is highly coveted and is one of the latest “interstices” of environmental conservation. While the establishment of a RAMSAR site[1]denies access to the wetlands on the east, and the expansion of the Kilombero Nature Reserve (KNR) restricts access to the forest on the west, the central and district governments plan to revive a sugar cane plantation project of 10,000 ha that is highly contested by local inhabitants. During the negotiations for land enclosures, different powers play in the struggle for space and resources. I will first show how the Village Land Use Plans (VLUPs) are used as one of the powerful tools by District and Village leaders to impose their planning objectives. Then I will underline that this plan, anchored in the Local Government Act and the Village Land Act of 1982 and 1999 respectively, highlights the necessity to think about the definition of a “village” and its legal recognition in the “global land rush” in Tanzania [2].

A revival based on an historical map

In 1976, in the same way, the Nyerere government established the Mngeta farm on 5,848 ha (60 km south-west of the valley) in cooperation with the Korean government; the Sugar Development Corporation (SUDECO [3]) with the help of the British Booker Tate Company[4], surveyed and demarked around 10,000 ha[5] of land in the Ruipa valley to establish a sugar cane plantation. Some elders in the villages relate that Cubans initiated the establishment of the sugarcane plantation, using beacons to delineate the borders. Others claim that it had already been demarked by the Boers in 1953 during colonization and the first NGOs reports (Haki Ardhi, 2007) claimed it was surveyed in 1984. Nevertheless, the only historical and tangible evidence of the demarcation is a map representing the blocks of the intended plantation (LHRC & Haki Ardhi, 2009), on which the district bases its current Land Use Plan (Fig. 1). Because 400 parastatal companies went bankrupt in 1976, the sugar cane plantation as a national enterprise was not implemented (Chachage, 2010). The first villages created in the area were Mofu and then Mbingu, Namwawala and Idete grew up along railway tracks. The implementation of the TAZARA and Ujamaa Vijiji schemes played an important role in the geography of population that still influences the relationships in current negotiations[6]. In the 1990s, estate privatization led to the displacement of large numbers of pastoralists and farmers. In the Kilombero Sugar Cane Plantation in the North of the valley, people were forced to move from the Msolwa-Rwembe area when the Illovo Group started investing and most of them moved to Ruipa, where plenty of “free lands” were available. A new wave of immigration – essentially Maasai and Sukuma – started in early 2000s dues to the privatization of rice estates in the Mbeya region, Mbarali district (Tenga et al., 2008; Maganga et al., 2009). Those new comers, who had no clue about the sugar cane project, were given land far away from the railway tracks, on the demarked land.

Fig 1. The Ruipa site enclosed between large-scale environment conservation

Source: Blache A., 2017, based on the Kilombero Land District Department’s datas

In 2005, the government and the Sugar Board of Tanzania wanted to reallocate the “ownership” of the land to the Illovo Group through district officers. Nevertheless, in 2012, Illovo pulled out of the “multi-billion deal due to endless conflicts” (Rugonzibwa, 2012). Seeking for a new investor under SAGCOT, the government presented the land as “free for investment” and as a final stage of “site preparation to promote and lease it to qualified investors” (SAGCOT, 2012: 30), as well as a “proposed irrigation scheme” of 7,298 ha financed by USAID (SAGCOT, 2013). However, according to observations on the field and villagers’ reports, the area is densely populated nowadays. Land scarcity led to severe local land conflicts, and no irrigation scheme for small-scale farmers has been implemented yet.

The VLUP and “the valuation process”

Up to now, the validity of the government ownership over this land has not been proved by the law and the only evidence is a map dating from 1976 (Haki Ardhi, 2009). Besides, while the “participatory” process in land transfer is being promoted through the G8-Tanzania Transparency Partnerships on Land and Extractives, various events have highlighted the arbitrary exercise of power and coercive consultations of villagers. Even if villagers disagreed during a village assembly in 2005, the district authorities used different forms of power to force the implementation of this plantation[7]. Three tools have been essential for district authorities to impose their objective: the spatial and ecological valuation process for compensation, the drawing and validation of the VLUPs based on the “historical maps”, and finally, the (non)recognition of the local government of the new villages.

According to an undated and hand-drawn map (Fig. 2), the project was divided into 6 blocks. Blocks D, E and F were later abandoned by SUDECO. The removal of block D is mainly due to the fact that missionaries had already demarked 2,246 ha of land in Mbingu (representing 44% of the current village) and the requests from Mbingu villagers to “retain residential and farming area from the Sugar Farming Project (SUDECO)[8]”. In 1987, the Usafirishaji Mikoani Union acquired 2,404 ha in Chiwachiwa village (block E[9]) but did not implement it. Up to 2017, a committee of villagers constituted mainly of elderly men challenged this at the High Court and at a District level in order to regain ownership over their lands. They won the case in February 2017 because no investment had been implemented by the so-called investor since 1987, and President John Magufuli recently revoked this owner’s title deeds (Nditi, 2017).

Fig 2. Undated map showing the intended blocks

Those four villages are in the national register, which officially gives villagers the right to control their lands. However, the drawing of the District Land Use Plan (DLUP) as well as the use of the VLUP under the necessary “land regulation” program is one of the strongest tools of powers of exclusion. In December 2008, district authorities asked for a village meeting in Namwawala where they presented a new VLUP, showing that 62% of the village would be allocated to a sugar plantation and 10% for the RAMSAR site (Fig. 3). The same process was applied in 2012 to Mofu and Kisegese villages. In Mofu, the 2012 VLUP showed that the area demarked for the sugar cane plantation, under the name uwekezaji (investment in Kiswahili) on 1184,46 ha (16,64% of village land) and 2173,39 ha (30,55% of the village lands) reserved for the RAMSAR site, i.e. a total of 47.19% of the village lands were enclosed. In the Kisegese VLUP, a “shamba [farm] SUDECO Kisegese” of 704 ha represented 13.43% of the total village land.

Source: Blache A., 2017, based on Sugar Board of Tanzania (1976) and Kilombero District Land Department (2008)

In Tanzania, the Village Assembly and the Village Council have to agree to the VLUP, under a so-called “participatory” process. Nevertheless, whereas SAGCOT promotes initiatives such as: “(…) linking local land use planning with national and sub-national development planning to ensure coherent allocation of land and water, protect against land grabbing, and empower communities in negotiation processes” (SAGCOT, 2011: 2), one realizes that local consultancies and transparent decision-making seem to be only rhetorical tools and not really put in practice[10]. Indeed, the power of the district authority is strong when it comes to draw and validate the VLUP[11], especially when a large-scale project is planned. Furthermore, among villagers, some people can use their financial and social capital to enhance their power by controlling the decision-making process (Bierschenk, Chauveau & Olivier de Sardan, 2000). In the case of the Namwawala VLUP, the Village Assembly first disagreed with the VLUP. Nevertheless, forged meeting minutes were produced by one of the village council members, using names of deceased people, children and foreigners to provide district authorities with the necessary documentation (interviews in Idandu, 2015; Bergius, 2014).

On January 2009, Namwawala villagers learned through a local Radio that they would have to accept a future valuation process, if they were not to lose their promised compensation after the evictions. Using photos and GPS, district authorities, police officers with the National Land Use Planning Commission and Valuers started to evaluate lands in the three hamlets concerned, providing land and crops evaluation papers for future compensation. Agreeing with the valuation process amounts giving his agreement for eviction, some tried resisting or hiding in the forest to steer clear of officials, but were threatened by policemen (LHRC & Haki Ardhi, 2009; interview in Idandu, 2015).

The force and violence used by district authorities alerted the Namwawala villagers, who started to organize themselves in a committee on 31st January 2009 during a Village Assembly that was planned right after the radio announcement. They gathered with some villagers from Mofu, Kisegese to make a follow-up on the validity of this land transfer and asked to national NGOs to help them in this process. The RAMSAR site implementation and the 2012-2013 evictions of pastoralists and their cattle were also catalysts for actions of resistance[12]. Again, through the National Newspaper, district authorities warned them that those “who would go against the national interest would be punished” (Venanc, 2009, quoted by Bergius, 2015: 97). Since then, it happened on regular basis that active members of the committee get arrested and interrogated (interview in Idandu, 2016). Several cases of corruption occurred during the negotiation process, involving both village and district authorities as well as members of the resistance committee[13]. The resistance committee launched a first case in 2010, which was dropped by a corrupted committee member. A second case identified as N°40/2012 is still pending at the High Court of Tanzania[14].

Village subdivision and the process of registering a village

All powers used by district officers are based on geographical tools as well as land law interpretations. Therefore, one of the main issues raised is law interpretation: what is a “village” and what does it represent? Village lands are “within village boundaries”. But the delimitation of “village boundaries”, the definition of a “village” itself and its formal registration must also be taken into account in the negotiations. Since 1988, the valley experienced 117% population growth (National Bureau of Statistics Tanzania, 2012). When the number of people represented is geographically and economically expanding, local government organs must evolve and alter their shapes and structures: from the wilaya (district), the tarafa (divisions), the kata (wards), the kijiji (village) to the kitongoji (hamlet), frontiers of authority must change. Nevertheless, the political recognition of the new village from its hamlet status doesn’t depend on legal characteristics only, such as the number of households, streets, school and village office. It is mainly its geographical location which determines if the district would allow or not the village to elect its government and therefore become a “full village”. The village can be recognized as a village and being registered at the TAMISEMI[15], but district authorities don’t necessarily accept that the new village elects its own village government, which retains it under the authority of the “mother-village”. Indeed, to register a village, villagers have to elect a Village Council and then must agree together with the Village Assembly on a VLUP, along with district officers (URT, 1982). This VLUP allows the village council to allocate customary rights of occupancy.

In the Ruipa case, the four main villages mentioned above were constituted of at least two vitongoji (hamlets). According to documents from SAGCOT, the site is said to have been “resurveyed recently to account for local villages growth” (SAGCOT, 2012a). In reality, several villages have been subdivided since January 2010 and it affected both the VLUP process and the sugar cane plantation negotiations. Namwawala village, registered in 1993, was composed of four sub-villages: Namwawala A, Namwawala B, Kichangani and Idandu. Mofu was composed of Ihenga, Mofu, Ikwambi and Myomboni. Ikwambi and Ihenga were recognized as villages and got their village governments in 2014. Nevertheless, Idandu and Myomboni – the two hamlets mainly affected by the project – are still waiting to get “full” recognition through an elected local government. Indeed, looking at the 2008 and 2012 VLUPs and the RAMSAR map representing new village borders nearby the RAMSAR site, the total project would in fact represent (Fig. 4):

Fig. 4: Overlapping the 1976 map, the 2008 and 2012 VLUPs and the 2016 RAMSAR map

The Red lines show the borders of the plantation project based on the 1976 map. The blue areas show the new villages based on the 2016 RAMSAR map. On the 2012 Mofu and Kisegese VLUPs, the investment area is represented in pink and blue, respectively. Source: Blache A., 2017, based on datas from Sugar Board of Tanzania (1976) and KILORWEMP (2017) datas

The actions led by villagers to contest the sugar cane plantation were first to gather people from all the villages and hamlets concerned. When the issue of village subdivision (and “hamlets” recognition as “villages”) started, the organization was split and started to become more concentrated in the concerned hamlets. The majority of the members of the resistance committee are actually living in the hamlets mostly affected by the potential land loss that have already experienced evictions in the past and consider themselves as “investment refugees” (interview in Idandu, 2015-2016). From villagers’ representation, full registration is a way to steer clear of the influence of “mother-villages” and escaping central governments’ decisions, whose objectives differ: the later are mainly formed of individuals who do not own land on that area, where leaders are more inclined to welcoming the investment, hoping for “new employment opportunities, market access and infrastructure development” (focus group, Mofu, 2015). Miyomboni villagers are asking for a full registration of their village, arguing that Mofu leaders validated the VLUP without their consent and never invited them to attend political debates, village assemblies and village councils.

Recognizing the hamlets as villages would mean considering the lands as village lands and therefore, not owned by SUDECO. Villagers argue that it is the reason why District authorities didn’t allow Miyomboni and Idandu to elect their own local government. Village subdivision stopped the land use planning process and therefore the implementation of the plantation. Again, district authorities’ contradictions showed the complexity of these negotiations. With an official letter sent in 2013, by removing the validity of the Namwawala VLUP of 2008 because of village subdivision, district authorities argued that the previous plan “had been registered in government magazine” whereas the village assembly disagreed. Secondly, through this letter, the Kilombero Land District Director recognized the existence of Idandu village. However, Idandu villagers still are not allowed to elect their own local government and rely on Namwawala decisions, as it is the case for Miyomboni hamlet and Mofu village.

Conclusion

We have seen how local elites exploit the existing institutional land governance framework and village local government recognition to force the establishment of enclosures through coercive consultancy. The Village Land Use Plans drawn from the top are strong power’ tools used in the large-scale land transfers, either for agriculture or environment conservation objectives (Vandergeest & Peluso, 1995: 387). Furthermore, the Land Tenure Support Programs – of which the pilot sites are the villages of the Kilombero valley – started before the land tenure conflicts were solved at the High Court. Finally, one can see that “the colonial project [which] has materialized at first in the spatial dimension of setting boundaries for investment in productive space by the codes and standards of the regionalized state” (Charlery de la Masselière, 2014) is still guiding these developmental policies through a rational representation of the space.

[1] The RAMSAR Convention is an international treaty adopted in Ramsar (Iran) in 1971 for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands, which was signed by in August 2000 by Tanzania.

[2] This paper is part of my PhD thesis which analyzes the Kilombero Valley and its surrounding mountains as a “system” in which different actors evolve at multiple scales. In that sense, the Valley as a “cluster” is one component and representation of this “system”. It can be understood as a space that is polarized both by its own resources and geophysical characteristics and open to national and international scales, observing its historical and contemporary production and the subsequent power relationships involved (Lefebvre, 1974). My fieldwork took place during a total of 13 months, focusing on the whole valley and then subdividing my analysis at a village level to understand the declension of powers of exclusions at intermediary and micro scales in the “interstices of the firm” (Chouquer, 2011).

[4] “Food Processing Africa, accessed on line on 15/08/2017: http://www.foodprocessingafrica.com/booker-tate-knows-about-sugar/

[5] As we will see, the figures vary between 9,367.39 ha and 10,047 ha for the initial project.

[6] Indeed, most of the people coming into the area from the 1970s were TAZARA workers or people who came to grow rice and transport it to Iringa or Dar es Salaam thanks to the railway (Monson, 1996). The Ujamaa villagization scheme brought scattered populations together close to the main transport routes and social services established by missionaries.

[7] For a detailed presentation of the different events from 2005 to 2010, see LHRC & Haki Ardhi, 2009; Chachage, 2010; Bergius, 2015.

[9] Interestingly, if one compares the “proposed estate location” map (Fig. 2) and the map untitled “Locality Ruipa Farm n°6 L.O. 79511 on 2404 ha”, one can see the concordance of the two blocks, except from the fact that the first map shows “1,150 ha net” while representing the same area.

[10] For further examples of the top-down process of the PVLUP, see Bergius, 2016; Greco, 2015; Chachage, 2010; Kauzeni et al., 1993.

[11] Apart from the District authorities, international companies and funds are also financing the VLUP of the villages bordering their plantations, as is the case in other villages of the Kilombero Valley. For example, Green Resources Ltd. in the south-west of the district financed the VLUP of the villages surrounding the pine and eucalyptus plantation; the BTC and the European Union finance the VLUP of the villages surrounding the RAMSAR; and KVTC in the central Kilombero valley financed the VLUP of nearby villages; World Wide Fund (WWF) financed the villages surrounding the Udzungwa mountains; etc.

[12] “It is estimated that 486,736 out of an estimated total of 500,000 livestock were seized and removed (…) [and] around 5,000 people (pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and a few farmers) were moved out of the districts due to the eviction exercise” (IGWIA, 2013: 1).

[13]Interferences between Kilombero District MPs, SBT board members and village leaders or even intertwined interests and status cannot be detailed in this paper, nevertheless they were important components of power relationships during negotiations.

[14] During my three years on the field, committee members went several times to the High Court in Dar el Salaam, but appointments were either cancelled or the final judgment postponed.

Biography

Adriana Blache is a Ph.D candidate in human and social geography at the University of Toulouse, LIIST Laboratory and lecturer at the Geography department. Her thesis is oriented towards the continuities of the colonial process of territorialization in Tanzania.

Anna Fichtmüller, ” Control and Co-optation. State influence in the market and transport sectors in Kampala”, Mambo! Volume XIV, (5) 2017.

It is said that the mobilization of particular interest groups is a vital component to the consolidation of democracy (Goodfellow 2017a). Thus, discovering a vibrant associational structure in the transport and market sectors in Uganda’s capital Kampala seems to give hope for the development of an active civil society. Both sectors are vital to the city’s economy. In a country that lacks industrialization trading, and particularly petty trading within the informal economy, has become an important source of income for a majority of Kampala inhabitants. Conservative estimates believe that there are about 200 markets in Kampala, of which only a quarter are gazetted by the Kampala Capital City Authority – KCCA (Monteith 2016 : 155). This does not take the numerous hawkers and street vendors into account. It is equally evoked as a place for the “common man” and thus an important target for political support. The transport sector on the other hand is estimated to employ about 100 000 people; it services many more commuters on a daily basis and has a large geographical outreach – it is an important tool for mobilization (Goodfellow 2017 : 1569). Since both sectors have a political clout and are well organized into associational structures, they appear to be important counterweights, representing the interests of the employees in their industries to the government. A closer look however, reveals the proximity between past and present associations with the government through a co-optation of the leadership and – more recently – the “de-democratization” of these structures by integrating their mandates into the work of the KCCA, a body controlled and appointed by the central government. The Kampala City Council (KCC) was the body of the municipal government, approximately 80% of services were provided through the KCC. With the introduction of multipartism, Kampala became a stronghold of the opposition and the KCC has since then been governed by the opposition. In 2010 the Kampala Capital City Act paved way for the creation of the KCCA, which was widely considered as a mechanism to restrain opposition control over the city. This move dis-empowered the KCC and reduced the elected mayor to a mere ceremonial function. Instead, the management of the city became the responsibility of the executive director of KCCA, who was directly appointed by President Museveni.

This paper aims at highlighting some recurring tendencies of government control over seemingly independent bodies by combining experiences from the market and transport sectors. These strategies are basically three-fold:

The positioning of the associational leadership in proximity with the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM).

The harassment of opposition and associations not aligned with the government.

The personalization of politics due to intervention of President Museveni himself.

The paper then looks at the shift from KCC to KCCA and how it has brought in new dynamics in the associational landscape of these sectors, by appointing instead of electing leaders, suggesting a shift from dysfunctional associations to non-representative leadership.

Control and Co-optation

As mentioned above, the transport sector is considered an important arena for political mobilization. One of its increasingly growing branches is the motorcycle taxis, commonly called boda bodas. There have been several attempts by politicians of all factions to gain support from boda boda drivers and organize them into associations. There are about 60 associations today in the sector, which have, according to an associational representative, all come into being for political reasons:

“We have been having more than like 58 associations in the industry. But mainly, they have started then, because of politics, that is one, their own interests, their own interest of getting money from other people so that is where that people have started many associations. […] So, these politicians, […] they are pushing them to set an association of which it will be very easy to get these people when they are organized. […] According to me, they are all under political groups.”

Representative of Boda Boda 2010 (Kampala, 23.02.2017)

A journalist described how one can observe the sudden increase of these associations during the election period, as they are all competing for favors from the political parties. Beyond elections, there are about five groups that remain active. The biggest and most influential association is Boda Boda 2010, which is close to the current government, and according to its representative, is in control of “the industry[…]and all boda bodas in Kampala.” Other groups, such as KAMBE and KAMBA or Century Boda Boda have been created in opposition to Boda Boda 2010. KAMBE, the second largest group is said to be under opposition control. There is apparently an ongoing effort to unite all competing associations of the industry under the umbrella of the government allied Boda Boda 2010. This is being done through a call for unity, leaving “politics” behind, in favor of “development”.

“Fighting each other will not be the lasting solution of this industry. So that is the maturity that we are building now. That let us sit on a round table, you join that association which is in power, and then we resolve all the problems in the industry.”

Representative of Boda Boda 2010 (Kampala, 23.02.2017) The proximity with NRM is equally visible in the market leadership of the non-gazetted Park Yard market, in the New Agenda Traders Development Association (NATDA). One vendor close to opposition criticized the allegiance of their leadership to the government, to the point that they would even be hesitant to talk to people like her, knowing about her political affiliation. A representative of the association underlined the positive relationship with the government:

“The government listens to us; we created awareness through KCCA and the ministers of Kampala. […] We are not disappointed, they are promising the best. Now we have fewer evictions, we meet on a round table.”

NATDA Representative (Kampala, 16.01.2017)

In the case of the gazetted USAFI market, no leadership elections were held but the chairman was appointed by the KCCA executive director herself, for reasons allegedly unknown to him. The good relationship proved in the end to be futile for Park Yard, as the vendors were evicted in February 2017, about one month after the interview with the NATDA chairman, in a move led by the minister for Kampala, Bety Kamya. The closing was done under heavy police surveillance, but without any remarkable protests. This sparked allegations among the vendors that their leadership has been bought off, so as not to protest against the action. In the wake of the eviction Kampala’s lord mayor and three members of parliament visited the market to show support to the vendors. They eventually got arrested by police, hinting again at the power struggle between opposition and government[2].

This crackdown on opposition can also be observed among the taxi[3] drivers. Since 1986 the transport sector was firmly controlled by an elite, closely linked to the government, which used its position to lever several fees, but for which only a fraction was accounted for towards KCCA (Goodfellow 2017a). In opposition to these practices the Uganda Transport Development Agency (UTRADA) was created by drivers from within the sector, but its efforts yielded no results and were met with a lot of violence. It was only in 2011 when the KCCA took over the taxi business that the fee extortion decreased. At the same time however, it drastically limited the power of any existing organization. Because in 2015 a ministerial order declared the formation of any association as illegal, UTRADA has since struggled to gain clout, as they have no legal right to assemble or mobilize. Recruitment thus becomes a challenge, and many drivers fear disadvantages if they join. According to the UTRADA representative, the government put crime preventer at the taxi stages for surveillance and intimidation, who violently oppose activists within the sector. The reign of fear and the lack of capital to pay for legal fees in case of detention have made activism in the taxi sector increasingly difficult, leaving no avenues for representation other than through KCCA bodies.

By and large, within the boda boda sector and in the case of Park Yard and Usafi market we have seen the proximity of the main associations and the NRM government. Goodfellow, Titeca and Monteith have shown similar patterns in the markets of Nakasero and Kisekka (Goodfellow & Titeca 2012; Monteith 2016). On the contrary, the case of UTRADA shows how an organization is put under pressure if it does not follow the government line.

The tendency of replacing elected leaders with appointed managers and constraining free associations in the market and transport sector hints at a general de-democratization. This shift to more authoritarian leadership may make sense, when put in relation to the coming into existence of the KCCA.

The KCCA – a new player in town

One way of gaining political support for President Museveni among large urban informal groups, has been through presidential intervention to prevent policy changes that may be unfavorable to these groups, as long as the city was governed by KCC. For example, there have been several attempts to introduce taxation and regulation in the largely deregulated sector of motorcycle taxis, commonly known as boda bodas. These attempts included regulations on: the number of passengers to carry, the obligation to wear helmets and safety jackets, or to only ride with a valid driving permit. They have been stopped through the personal interference of the president (See Goodfellow 2017b : 127). The same could be observed in the market sector (Monteith 2016). The direct appeal to the president by the various informal groups provided an opportunity for Museveni to sabotage policy implementation of the city government governed by opposition, and at the same time gain support among these groups. Goodfellow and Titeca observe:

“Although the city government was formally empowered by decentralization, it was at the same time disempowered by under funding, the privatization of many of its functions and – above all – the constant intervention of central government.” (Goodfellow & Titeca 2012 : 266)

Being able to call on the president and have him act in their interest was thus an important political capital to have, and yet another reason to foster close links between the associational leaderships and the ruling government.

With the creation of KCCA however, the strategies needed to be revised. Contravening unpopular policy decisions is not an option anymore, if the president does not want to discredit his own executive body. Certainly, the president’s influence can still be seen in the city; for example, in the run up to the 2016 election, street hawkers were allowed on the street, despite previous severe crackdowns by KCCA. This is believed to have been a campaign strategy, to gain voter support. The fact that regulations of street hawkers continued as usual after the election supports this contention. He may still receive interest groups to present their stakes, but action does not necessarily have to follow, as in the case of UTRADA. After calling for a strike in protest of “multiple taxation” through KCCA, President Museveni met with the UTRADA leadership and KCCA, ordering the authority to stop illegal fees, however the charging continued. The UTRADA representative assumes that the President is not genuine, “because, in my knowing, if the president says so, it is an order, I think he is calling them [KCCA] back after we have gone, says ‘You leave it!’”

However, interference has decreased, which has gained KCCA the reputation of being an efficient organization, particularly among middle and high-income earners in the city. Yet, the question remains, how is discontentment being addressed? For one, it seems to be the opposition who tries to have a political gain out of KCCA regulations, as seen in the case of the Park Yard closure. However, as the eviction of the Park Yard vendors has shown, their scope of action is much more limited. Secondly, the de-democratization as implemented by KCCA results in the closing of space for voicing discontent. Through the direct appointment of market leaders and transport committee members the KCCA is able to choose leaders in the guise of the ruling party, who are not accountable to those they are supposed to represent. Closing down associational structures additionally limits the capacities of the workers and vendors to mobilize against legislation they deem unfavorable and thus diminishes their possibilities to voice discontent. In return, an increase in small, localized riots over the past ten years can be observed; it remains to be seen whether the shrinking space fostered through KCCA hegemony will further exacerbate this tendency.

Conclusion

While organizations representing group interests are usually seen as a positive sign of democratic consolidation, the example of Uganda has shown that they can also have detrimental effects. The proximity of the leadership to government, even though vital in personalized politics to guarantee a good connection with high ranking politicians, compromises the ability of the management to act on behalf of their members. This is exacerbated if the leadership receives personal gains, such as gifts or handouts[4]. Coupled with repression of opposing points of view, the politics of the “carrot and the stick” widely used by the NRM government can also be observed in these sectors. In that light, the shift from dysfunctional to no representation, as a result of KCCA hegemony, gives little hope that workers in these sectors will be sufficiently heard in the debate on the development of the city.

[1] This paper is a “byproduct” of a two months field research in the Ugandan capital Kampala, in 2017, supported by IFRA Nairobi. I call it a “byproduct” because the original scope of my research concentrated on the link between individual economic emergence and social mobilization. The data I refer to, has been collected through five expert interviews with two market chairmen, two representatives of associations in the transport sectors, and a KCCA official, as well as several informal discussions with workers in these sectors.

[3] The minibuses used for public transport are called “taxis” in Uganda, whereas regular taxis are referred to as “special hire”.

[4] The tendency to “buy off” leaders can not only be observed in the sectors mentioned above, but also among other trade unions, as the recent case of the abrupt ending of the strike of the Makerere University Academic Staff Association (MUASA) has shown and in the wider spheres of society, for example among religious leaders (see Fichtmüller 2014).

Anna Fichtmüller is a PhD candidate at Sciences Po Bordeaux. In her research, she questions the nature of the emerging African middle classes proclaimed by international consultancy firms, and actors like the African Development Bank. Through interviews with members of these so called middle classes in Kampala – Uganda, she first tries to describe what uniting characteristics – beyond being in the same income group- might exists among these groups, and to see if there is any evidence that they might act as proponents for a more democratic government, as is sometimes suggested.

Concerned about “providing reliable and sustainable water supply in the developing world,” a multinational water pump manufacturing company identified the inability to: collect and manage revenue, reduce “non-revenue-water” and lack of money for service and maintenance as the main challenges for “sustainable water supply” in the Global South.To provide a solution to these supposed problems, the company developed “automatic water dispensers”. The dispensers are meant to replace kiosk attendants in already existing water kiosks in “slums” and rural areas. The dispenser can be described as a foursquare unit with a display,an integrated touch screen and a slot on the front side for the blue customer cards that come with the dispenser. Above the slot, the display shows the balance on the card, the amount of the water fetched, and the price per litre. According to the product brochure, the prepayment feature that is integrated in the water cards shall “remove uncertainty in revenue collection”. Combined with an internet connected water management system (WMS), the dispensers promise to improve the efficiency of the respective tap water system by facilitating transparent revenue collection. Through these features the water system promises to become sustainable and respectively cost-covering. In the cartoon-like promotion film of the dispenser, the protagonist – a person labelled “water provider”– will by the end of the video have transformed into a “water manger”.

The emergence of automatic water dispensers can be associated with what Schnitzler(2016, p. 130)identifies as an “unprecedented investment” in creating technologies that are supposed to improve the lives of “the poor” – for example, water filtering (Redfield 2012) or bio metric (Donovan 2015) devices. They are therefore being framed as neutral solutions for supposed managerial deficiencies. According to Law and Ruppert however, what“devices are doing is not necessarily written on the package”(2013, p. 230, emphasize in original). Instead,they are proposing to conceptualize devices as “patterned teleological arrangements”. The reference to teleology points towards purpose and functionality which then allows us to say that devices do things. Namely, they “assemble and arrange the world in specific social and material patterns”. By hinting towards the social and the material, they are stressing that those patterned arrangements are always heterogeneous. They may include high-tech to bits and pieces, nuclear reactors, but also kit, and they may include people.Devices contribute to the patterning and (re)configuring of the relations between those heterogeneous elements. By so doing, they are constitutive of what is called social order.

Going back to the quote of Law and Ruppert however, how determinate they are is up for empirical investigation. Devices might not always pattern the world according to the scripts that had been imagined by their designers[1]. They may have quite some ordering capacities but the question if they have politics(Winner 1980),and then which kind of politics they co-constitute, has to be investigated empirically (Law 1992; Akrich 1992). Schnitzler (2016)argues that technologies can re-stabilize in new contexts and even become constitutive not only of social order, but more specifically of new “ethico-political assemblages”. Therefore, the first point is that their effects may change when devices are located in different networks of relations. They might enroll new purposes and elements along the way. The, within the confines of the “same” set of relations,a second point is that these devices might have multiple effects that are often not intentional. Water dispensers might dispense water, but they may also do a range of other things. They might embody a variety of different (political) agendas, which had originally not been envisaged. This again is always subject to change. Devices are contingent, precarious achievements that are never autonomous or final and that may not manage to keep together bits and pieces.

By drawing on ethnographies with automatic water dispensers from two different settings in Kenya, from one settlement within the confines of Nairobi and from a village some hundred kilometers eastwards of Nairobi, I want to discuss how automatic water dispensers pattern heterogeneous materials and reconfigure the relations between them. By doing so I want to show no matter how determinate that patterning is, it is up for empirical investigation, especially if it is political. By drawing on two different settings, I want to engage with how effects change in new sets of relations. For example,how seemingly neutral devices may co-constitute “ethico-political-assemblages” in what one may call techno-political patterning. But the dispensers might also enroll other unforeseen purposes along the way and do different things at the same time.

A disciplinary device for co-constituting cost-recovery

One of the sites where I spent a couple of months researching on how automatic water dispensers play out, is a village in rural Kenya where 30 water dispensers had been implemented by a well know international NGO and funded by a foundation from the UK. Here, typical water sources are rivers, dams, rain water and boreholes. One borehole usually supplies several water kiosks which are connected with pipes.Similarly, as the narrative in the advertisement of the dispenser goes, the problem formulated was that, due to money-mismanagement through the water committee – civilians managing the borehole – and fraud by the kiosk attendants, there was not enough revenue to cover the costs for maintenance. The implementation of the dispenser thus went in line with the efforts to achieve neoliberal policies of full cost recovery that had been brought underway in the Kenyan water sector with the Water Act from 2002, and globally since the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Cost-recovery is a contested achievement however, and needs to deal with material negotiations and configurations.Due to often rather far distances between a person’s home and the next water point,in these rural areas people usually go with their donkeys to fetch water. Before leaving home towards the water point, four empty jerrycans are fixed on one donkey. To accomplish this, two jerrycans are tied together at their handle on top and then lifted on the donkey’s back, where they are dangling to the left and right side of her belly (see picture below). Essential for this system of fetching water is to find a hose pipe fixed to the water tap of the kiosk, in order to fill up the jerrycans while they are on the donkey’s back. The kiosk attendant used to take care of fixing the hose pipe to the tap every day in the morning, and locking it inside the kiosk in the evening to avoid theft.At many kiosks now, the pipe stayed locked inside the kiosk. Having no pipe meant there was no way of getting the fluid and fugitive substance all the way from the tab,usually about 50cm above ground level,to the jerrycan on the donkey’s back. The customers had to remove the jerrycans to fill them up. Since two jerrycans are always tied together, taking them down means after filling those up, 40 litres have to be put back onto a mostly stubborn donkey. An impossible task for most of the people : “I went to the kiosk sometimes and I filled the jerrycans up. I then had to wait for someone to come by and help me. At times, the next person that comes is not in a position to help you. Maybe it is a child or a Mzee[2]. So,I stopped going there and I now go to the private borehole instead, which is more expensive”, a former customer explained.Donkeys seem not to have been taken into account in the scripts of the designers, which meant that they stood in the way of “efficient revenue collection”. In other cases,the device managed to pattern different arrangements, like a “collective user” (Akrich 1992, p. 208): people began to organize in a way that they would only go in groups to fetch water, in order to be able to help each other to lift the jerrycans.

The water users that managed to use the dispenser were still confronted with a prepaid component, that patterned the people’s water practices in different ways, especially regarding the until then, common practice of paying later for water. The more well off of them, like business owners,explained: “It is very good. My guys used to fetch water in the morning and then pay in the evening. Sometimes they would forget,and then all of a sudden you have a chain of enemies. Now I do budgeting for water in the evening, like for everything else”. The ones without a budget did not manage to adapt in this way. The prepaid component seeming quite determinate, they were forced to other arrangements: “Now, when there is no money, we go to the dams and rivers. Before, we would have talked to the kiosk attendant and if you were a trustworthy person, you also could pay the next day. But now there is no attendant to listen to you”. Opposed to this statement, the NGO workers praised the rational virtues of the dispenser, by contrasting them to the behavior of the attendant: “She (the attendant) could also give some free water. If your mother in law comes or your sister or your father, or a friend, who says ‘Oh I don’t have money, give me some water, I will bring money tomorrow.’ Maybe you are tempted to give. The dispenser […]just understands a water card with credits”. The word “temptation” can be literally translated in the desire to do something appealing that is against social norms. The dispenser seemed to embody and co-constitute the objectification of some new regime of rational morality, while dismissing behavior (like giving water to a thirsty person) that others might conceive of as a moral obligation.

Donkeys at times were challenging cost-recovery and led either to absence of people or to new arrangements like “collective users”. In many cases however, the patterning of the dispenser seemed to be quite determinate though. Many people were coming forward to play their roles as paying users that even by themselves developed modes of budgeting and thus organizing themselves. At the same time the dispensers failed to assemble budget where there simply was none. Besides its incompatibility with donkeys,the dispenser’s own determination undermined its task of dispensing water and cost recovery. The existence of some dispensers was threatened through absence, and they seemed to be in constant danger of “becoming a monument” as the NGO workers said, referring to the numerous water projects implemented in rural areas that are coming to a standstill on a regular basis.

Assembling benevolence, patterning techno-politics

In other sets of relations, the dispensers seemed to play out quite differently. In order to test them in a “Peri-urban” area the manufacturer agreed with the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, short Nairobi Water, to install four dispensers in water kiosks in a so called “informal settlement” in the city. The organization of the water supply in this area result in a situation where there are a few water kiosks owned by Nairobi Water and operated by officially registered groups from the area, which usually signed some sort of contract with Nairobi Water. To make some gain, these groups usually take higher prices (around 5 to 10 Kenyan Shilling (KES) per 20 litres) than customers pay when they purchase water from Nairobi Water via household connections. Most importantly however, the area is pervaded by a dense web of “illegal” PVC water pipes that inhabitants connected to the main pipes of Nairobi Water, and that supply taps that are run by informal water vendors.The connections are prone to water rationing – Nairobi Water closing the water for the area frequently, usually without announcement of the time and the duration. In both ways, the inhabitants mostly go to fetch water with yellow 20 litres jerry cans. As a result of shorter distances and rather donkey-unfriendly environments, in this case hose pipes are obsolete for non-commercial water practices at the household level.

“The governor wants the project. The elections are near and the governor wants to say that he has offered cheap, clean water for the poor!”, an employee of Nairobi Water named John[3] explained. As this quotes describes quite well, the governor, who even made it to the inauguration of the dispensers in the area, strategically used the technology for political goals(Hecht 1998). This techno-political arrangement needed some further patterning however. As opposed to the first setting were cost recovery was set as the priority, here the price for water was set on the low level of 0.50 KES, so that some users even wanted confirmation that Nairobi Water really did mean 50 cents and not 50 Shillings. To circumvent water rationing and provide water 24/7, the dispensers furthermore assembled water tanks on the roof of the kiosks and additionally big blue lorries with some white lettering saying “CLEAN WATER”, that had to navigate the narrow paths of the area to fill the tanks up every time when they were empty. To coordinate between empty tanks, the lorries and the inhabitants, Nairobi Water ordered John to be present within the area seven days a week.

Despite the efforts of providing water 24/7 from the dispensers, they were by far not enough to serve the whole area during rationing, which meant that the residents had to walk for long distances to get water from elsewhere. After a period with frequent rationing, there was increasingly unrest. In December 2015, the residents staged a protest blocking the main road to town after lacking water in the area for about three weeks. At this point, the dispensers enrolled a further political agenda since they were now mobilized as a tool of pressure. “They chased us away and they were threatening to burn the dispensers and block the lorries”,John said. Indeed,“after the protest,we had to make sure that there was water in the settlement all the time, even in the illegal connections”, John continued. Therefore, the dispensers became involved in the resident’s struggles for water and contributed to an improvement of water supply in the area in unforeseen ways.

The precarity of the dispenser continued however. Every time when there was no water in the settlement, the inhabitants now come to complain to John. They would threaten to kidnap the lorries and burn the dispensers. When the atmosphere was becoming too tense, John would put pressure on Nairobi Water to provide water for the area. Being present throughout, he would also find out when some protests were being planned.“Now every time we are planning a protest they switch on the water. They try to calm us down”, a resident told me. The dispenser and everything it assembled, i.e. the lorries and water tanks, became an arena of political negotiation that furthermore put the existence of the dispenser up for constant negotiation. When I came back to the area after a while, a tank on top of one kiosk had been stolen. Without its water connection, the dispenser became as idle as the previous kiosk operators used to describe themselves,since they had been expelled from the kiosk by the former. In other cases, the dispenser itself was just circumvented by people climbing onto the kiosk and taking out water directly from the tank at night, when John had left the area.

There were many inhabitants coming forward to play their role as users, the dispenser was dispensing water, also the transactions were being tracked by the WMS. People, especially the direct neighbors, were glad about the low prices and about water 24/7. Far from being neutral however, the dispenser co-constituted a political agenda and even enrolled a countering one. It was doing several things at the same time, and it was patterning relations between diverse elements in unforeseen ways. The structures it helped to co-constitute however remained precarious and always prone to breakdown.

Conclusion

Regarding an unprecedented investment in seemingly neutral devices that are supposed to solve the assumed problems of “the poor” and by taking a device to produce “water managers” as an example, I wanted to discuss this assumed neutrality. Instead, I’m prosing to analyse devices as such as what Law and Ruppert term “patterned teleological arrangements”. Beyond neutrality, this perspective allows to foreground that the effects of devices change in different sets of relations and that they may also do many things at once, some that were written on the package and some that were unplanned.

In the first setting,the water dispenser co-constituted an assemblage of cost-recovery that set out to discipline and to objectify new regimes of rational morality by dismissing human temptation. In the second setting however, cost-recovery did not play a big role. Other than being determinate, the same mechanism of excluding the human factor mobilized a narrative of benevolence, of providing cheap water for the poor by excluding the cartels and thus became part of the governor’s strategy to achieve political goals. Whereas in the rural setting, donkeys and its own determination led to new arrangements or threatened the dispenser’s existence through absence, in the second setting it enrolled countering political agendas that threatened to pull it apart. While dispensing water and collecting revenue as it was supposed to, it took part in techno-political patterning that led to an improvement of water supply for the area, in unexpected but precarious ways.

Christiane Tristl is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at Frankfurt University, Germany. She conducts ethnographic research on experiments between philanthrocapitalism and marketization in South-North relations. From a Science and Technology Studies perspective, she is focusing of the co-constitution of these processes with technological devices. The article draws on fieldwork with automatic water dispensers in one settlement within Nairobi, Kenya and in a village on the Kenyan countryside. This allowed her to carve out the relational character of such technological devices.

Sam de Schutter “Transnational Activism: An Entangled History of the Disability Movement in Tanzania”, Mambo! Volume XIV (3) 2017.

Disability does not just refer to an individual impairment, but is constructed through social relations and is about how society deals with bodily norms and deviance. As social relations, norms and attitudes are not universal, it logically follows that different societies have different ways of thinking about and dealing with disability. In short, the experience of disability is culturally contingent and differs from one society to another. In relation to the history of disability, at least two remarks can be made regarding this statement.

First of all, historians of disability have not yet fully explored the implications of this contingency. What Catherine Kudlick observed in 2003 still holds true today: disability history has so far mostly focused on Western Europe and the United States. There is a need to include ‘non-Western’ societies in historical analysis, as this would bring into focus the “contingent, contextual nature of disability”, but this is so far still a “scholarly world waiting to be discovered” (Kudlick 2003, 790). For a broadening of perspective beyond the Western world, historians still need to rely on insights from other disciplines.

This leads to a second remark. While an awareness of the idea of cultural contingency has led scholars from other disciplines to explore experiences of disability in the Global South, this has often been done in a dichotomous way. At least two lines of analysis can be discerned. On the one hand there has recently been an increasing reflection on disability in the Global South by critical disability scholars, inspired by postcolonial studies (Grech and Soldatic 2015). This offers a valuable perspective, as it rightfully points to the power structures of global inequality in which knowledge and institutions circulate. However, it also asserts existing dichotomies between ‘the West and the Rest’ through an overarching metaphor of exportation: the West exports “‘knowledge’, methods … and practice to an undeveloped South space” (Grech 2015, 17). The agency of people with disability in the Global South themselves is thus limited; they are only at the receiving end. On the other hand, there is a longer, anthropological tradition of pointing towards the local and cultural particularities of disability, asserting that disability is not a universal concept, but something that is indeed culturally contingent. As a side effect, however, this has produced many analyses of disability as a localized phenomenon within one clearly distinguishable ‘culture’.[1] What this does – apart from essentializing the ways in which ‘a culture’ deals with disability – is setting the local apart from the global, contrasting local cultures with more global ideas and often ignoring the impact of global developments (colonialism or neoliberalism) on local concepts.

We have thus a ‘global’ perspective which limits ‘local’ agency and a ‘local’ perspective which diminishes the role of ‘global’ developments.[2] The purpose of this paper then is not to break with these strands of literature altogether. On the contrary, we need to build on the valuable insights these scholars have put forward: the context of global inequalities, the stories of resistance and appropriation, or the local specificities of disability. However, I want to explore how to write histories of disability that go beyond dichotomies between the local and the global and bring both aspects into a single framework. The question then becomes: how can we write about the history of disability in one particular locality while being sensitive to both local particularities (the cultural contingency of disability) and global developments within which local events are firmly embedded?

I would like to offer a first impetus to answering this question, not by offering a fixed and elaborate theoretical framework, but by exploring a case study from my own research. Between November 2016 and January 2017 I have spent a little over two months in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where I have done numerous oral history interviews with people from different Disabled Peoples’ Organizations (DPOs) and disability activists. In this paper I use these oral history sources, in combination with sources from the Tanzania National Archives (TNA) and some published documents, to reflect on the history of the disability movement in Tanzania. Such a history will ultimately show an engagement with both local and global elements at the same time.

This paper is divided into two sections, based on themes and historical references that recurred in almost every oral history interview I conducted. In the first section, I will deal with the beginnings of the disability movement and the question why most of the respondents situated these origins within the early educational efforts by missionaries in the 1950s and 1960s. In the second section, I will deal with the further history of the movement. Here, I will focus on how disability activists have acted as ‘translators’, adapting ‘universal’ instruments to their local circumstances and simultaneously bringing culturally specific phenomena within the realms of these universal discourses.

The Beginnings of a History

When asked to relate the history of the disability movement in Tanzania, almost all respondents started their narratives in the days of late colonialism or early independence. To start their history at this point refers to the first organized interventions on disability by two main actors: the colonial state and the missionaries.

Paralleling developments in the British metropolis (Anderson 2011), the Second World War led to the first efforts of the colonial government to rehabilitate “African ex-soldiers injured during service”. An African Rehabilitation Centre was established in Nairobi in 1942, where injured servicemen from the different East African colonies were sent “to enable them to overcome their disabilities”. This rehabilitation however was limited to “[t]he restoration of disabled men to physical fitness by physiotherapeutic measures not including occupational therapy”.[3] While the rehabilitation services quickly expanded to include disabled civilians, they did not expand into the realms of training and education. Missionaries were the first to move into this domain. In 1950, the Anglican Church established the first school for the blind within the territory of present-day Tanzania: the Buigiri School in Dodoma. Other missionary orders also started schools for Tanzanians with visual impairments, although only after independence. The Swedish Free Mission and the Lutheran Church opened schools in Tabora and Lushoto, in 1962 and 1963 respectively. The 1960s also saw the first schools for other categories of disabilities, when the Roman Catholic Church established the Tabora Deaf-Mute Institute in 1963 and the Salvation Army started providing education for people with physical disabilities in 1967 (Mpopu, Oakland, and Chimedza 2007).

When conducting interviews with disability activists, the first date respondents gave when reconstructing the history of the disability movement in Tanzania, usually referred to the creation of one of these special schools. For example, the director of the Tanzania Association of the Deaf (CHAVITA, Chama cha Viziwi Tanzania) claimed that the creation of the Deaf-Mute Institute in Tabora in 1963 was the “official start of the history of deaf people” in Tanzania. His explanation of this statement was twofold. Firstly, he contended that the opening of this school was surrounded by a lot of campaigning. Parents were encouraged to bring their children to this school, which promoted the view that education for children with hearing impairments was possible. The creation of this institute is thus framed as a first historical step towards breaking the stigma of deaf people as non-productive, ineducable members of society. Secondly, this event is framed within a narrative of resistance. As the school used the method of oralism, which meant teaching children to speak and recognize speech through lip-reading, most of the students attending were not getting good results. This, combined with the persistence of the stigma regarding deafness, meant that students who graduated from the Tabora institute had very few career possibilities. This encouraged some of these students to join forces, which was allegedly an important impetus leading to the creation of CHAVITA in 1983. Furthermore, this school brought together students from different parts of the country and, defying the oralist method, they often communicated through signs, which led to the creation of new forms of sign language and the coming into being of a Tanzanian Sign Language from the bottom up.[4]

Seeing that for DPOs in present-day Tanzania access to education is still a crucial issue in advocating for disability rights, it is no surprise that when reconstructing their history, activists choose these first moments of access to education as a starting point. These historical moments are framed within a narrative of how education has been the first step in the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Tanzanian society. It is however wrong to see this simply as an acknowledgment of how missionaries brought education to people with disabilities in Tanzania. This becomes evident in the narratives of resistance, as in the history of CHAVITA above or in the similar ‘founding myth’ of the Tanzania League of the Blind (TLB), which was founded in 1964 by students from the Manoleo Vocational Training Center in Tabora. This organization grew from a student movement of blind students that protested against discrimination from the ‘hostile’ white management of the center, which trained both visually impaired and non-disabled students.[5]

Building an International Disability Movement

The further history of the disability movement in Tanzania is constructed around some key events and with reference to both local/national and international developments. It usually starts with the first Disability Acts of 1982 and ends with the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2010. What is interesting to see is how local/national developments are always framed in a transnational way and how global events get translated to gain local relevance. It is therefore most fruitful to understand the history of the disability movement in Tanzania from the perspective of a transnational history. As Akira Iriye has put it, “in today’s world virtually all issues are of international scope and relevance. There is no such thing as a purely local problem that can be solved in isolation” (Iriye 2004, 218). This is no different for Tanzanian disability activists. A recent survey of DPOs in Tanzania starts its historical background by stating that “Disabled People’s Organizations derive their legality and impetus from the context of the global history of disability of [the] 1980s” (Sokile, Mkatambo, and Rutachwamagyo 2013). It is thus important to study the growth of national civil society movements, such as the Tanzanian disability movement, as part of a wider transnational movement and to see how Tanzanian DPOs actively engaged with certain transnational events and instruments. In this respect, Sally Engle Merry uses the concept of ‘vernacularization’ to talk about how universal human rights language is used by local actors and adapted to local circumstances. She writes: “A key dimension of the process of vernacularization is the people in the middle: those who translate the discourses and practices from the arena of international law and legal institutions to specific situation of suffering and violation. … Translators refashion global rights agendas for local contexts and reframe local grievances in terms of global human rights principles and activities” (Merry 2006, 39). DPOs in Tanzania have taken on this role of translators of transnational disability rights issues.

This goes a long way in explaining why the early 1980s figure so prominently in the histories of the disability movement as they are constructed by members of Tanzanian DPOs. The starting point is always the two Disability Acts of 1982. These two parliamentary acts for the first time laid out some ground rules on the employment of and the care for people with disabilities. It was no coincidence that they were passed in 1982, as this was the National Year of Disabled Persons in Tanzania. This was in its turn a continuation of efforts set up during the UN International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) in 1981. The IYDP was an important event in constituting disability as a global concern. It resulted in the formulation of a World Programme of Action (WPA), which was to be implemented during the International Decade of Disabled Persons (1983-1992). This consequently led to a large number of development projects in developing countries focusing on the issue of disability. The reason why disability activists in Tanzania all refer to the IYDP as a key event is because of their role as translators. They both used the ideas enshrined in the WPA to tackle specific, ‘localized’ issues, while simultaneously framing local issues in an international human rights language. As one respondent put it, international events like the IYDP or, more recently, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) are ‘advocacy tools’, used by DPOs “to advocate within [their] own culture”, while they always try to “localize the situation”.[6] This means that we need to look at how DPOs in Tanzania, departing from a locally embedded understanding of disability, strategically used these international events and instruments to further the integration of persons with disabilities in Tanzanian society.

To explore this issue, I take a short leave from my interviews and move to an interesting document found at the Tanzanian headquarters of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Dar es Salaam. It is a report from a ‘top policy makers’ seminar held at Arusha in 1991 on the equalization of opportunities for Tanzanians with disabilities. The conference was organized by the Department of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Labour and Youth Development, in collaboration with the ILO. Over the course of two days, speeches were given by representatives from the government, ILO, different DPOs, and the subregional chairman of Disabled Peoples’ International (DPI), which is the first internationally organized DPO founded in 1981. The report starts by stating the rationale behind the two-day seminar. Seeing that, ten years after the IYDP “little had been achieved towards integration of people with disabilities (PWDs) in the daily life of their communities”, the conference was meant to discuss how the WPA could be implemented in Tanzania. It is interesting to read the speeches delivered by representatives of the Tanzanian DPOs, where they constantly take on the role of translators.

One of the barriers to integration identified by most representatives is the framing of disability in Tanzanian society in terms of ‘witchcraft’ or ‘curses’. These ‘traditional beliefs’, as one DPO-leader put it, were seen as an important element in the marginalization of people with disabilities, who were sometimes seen as kibwengo – an elf or evil sea spirit (ILO 1991). The link between disability and witchcraft is however a difficult subject. Emphasizing explanations of disability in terms of witchcraft, sorcery and curses when writing about Africa, might be part of what Ingstad has called the ‘north-south myth’, where “in order to raise money, create awareness, etc., a picture of the situation for disabled people has often been painted as negatively as possible, emphasizing shame, hiding, killing, etc.” – and thus also witchcraft (Ingstad 1990, 188). Kisanji has furthermore noted that there is also ample evidence of positive attitudes towards disability in Tanzanian society (Kisanji 1995).

This paper is however not the place to go into the connections between disability and witchcraft in Africa. What is important is to see how DPO leaders in the 1991 seminar did refer to instances of witchcraft, claiming for example that “if a child with disability is born in a village, numerous causes will be enumerated and conclusion drawn is either witchcraft, curse, calamity or a punishment of a certain kind as a result of sins to the concerned family” (ILO 1991, 38). What is interesting about these statements is that these culturally specific notions about disability appear in this highly transnational conference, where international ILO experts and a representative from a transnational DPO, together with government officials and national DPO leaders discuss the implementation of a transnational instrument, the World Programme of Action. None of those present questioned the validity of this document or saw the universal language of it as incompatible with the ‘local problems’ described, or as the DPI representative put it: “We don’t need another WPA but what is needed is its implementation” (ILO 1991, 96). That is why the Tanzania League of the Blind requested “the government to declare another decade (1992-2002) as an active decade for implementation of recommendations contained in the WPA” (ILO 1991, 43). Inscribing to the goal of the WPA, ‘full participation and equality’, was thus seen as one way of dealing with these “traditional beliefs and taboos” (ILO 1991). In this way, DPOs translated between culturally specific problems and internationally designed instruments.

Conclusion

The history of disability activism in Tanzania is strongly linked to an international struggle for disability rights, and offers a way to write the history of Tanzanian DPOs into a more global history. After all, fighting for disability rights means being part of a globalized disability movement. This is true for disability rights activists and DPOs in Tanzania, as much as it is true for any other part of the world. To inscribe themselves in this global movement, Tanzanian DPOs themselves also firmly situate their own history within global developments. It is thus no surprise to read their claim that “Disabled People’s Organizations derive their legality and impetus from the context of the global history of disability of 1980s where numerous efforts, both substantive and promotional, were taken nationally and internationally to improve the overall situation of persons with disabilities” (Sokile, Mkatambo, and Rutachwamagyo 2013). In the same vein, CHAVITA can claim the creation of a deaf school in Tabora by missionaries as the official start of the history of deaf people in Tanzania, because that is the first time that deaf people gained access to an institution that is a sine qua non in gaining access to a more global citizenship.

As historians are slowly starting to include the Global South into their histories of disability, this paper is meant as a reflection on how to do this. It is not intended to discard the valuable contributions made by other disciplines. Of course power relations and global inequalities have a tremendous impact on what knowledge circulates and how it does so. It is equally true that having a disability in Tanzania is in a lot of ways significantly different from having a disability in, say, the United States. However, within this field of structurally determining factors, people with disabilities have lived their lives and disability activists have actively engaged with these local and global processes, and it is important to recognize their role in shaping their own history.

Sam De Schutter is a PhD candidate in History at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He conducts research on the history of disability and development in the second half of the twentieth century, analyzing interventions on disability by UN agencies (WHO, ILO, UNESCO) in Tanzania and Kenya. His research is part of the ERC project “Rethinking Disability: The Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective”.

ILO. 1991. “Equalization of Opportunities for Tanzanians with Disabilities. Proceedings of Government of Tanzania (mainland) Top Policy Makers Seminar Held at Arusha, International Conference Centre, 25-26 November 1991.” Arusha.

Ingstad, Benedicte. 1990. “The Disabled Person in the Community: Social and Cultural Aspects.” International Journal of Rehabilitation Research 13 (3): 187–94.

Kisanji, Joseph. 1995. “Attitudes and Beliefs about Disability in Tanzania.” In Innovations in Developing Countries for People with Disabilities, edited by Brian O’Toole and Roy McConkey, 51–70. Chorley: Lisieux Hall.

Mpopu, Elias, Thomas Oakland, and Robert Chimedza. 2007. “Africa: East and Southern, Special Education in.” Encyclopedia of Special Education: A Reference for the Education of Children, Adolescents and Adults with Disabilities and Other Exceptional Individuals. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.

1982. World Programme of Action Concerning Disabled Persons: Report of the Secretary-General, Addendum

[1] For example, the pioneering volume on disability from an anthropological perspective, Ingstad and Whyte’s Disability and Culture, contained articles on the experiences of disability by the Punan Bah of Central Borneo, the Maasai in Kenya, the Songye of Zaïre, etc.

[2] This is, for the sake of the argument, a generalization and simplification. There are of course notable exceptions, such as Julie Livingston’s Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana.

This working paper analyzes practices of consultation associated to two specific recent land policies in Tanzania. It aims at understanding why there are important discrepancies between official policies and practices associated to their implementation. It argues that the role played by international institutions and actors in shaping African politics— neo-liberal development policies and discourses—should not be overstated. Instead, I contend that the international influence explains only partly the practices associated to the implementation of Tanzania land’s policies: its hegemonic impact being mostly superficial.

Understanding practices associated to land policies requires considering the lasting impact of Tanzania’s culturally and historically embedded normative structure of governance and relations of power. Despite her adoption of more liberal policies since the early 1990s, Tanzania displays some enduring ideational features associated to her socialist past such as the conceptualization of the role played by the state in development and the prevalence of top-down governance practices.

Thus, practices associated to the participative dimension of development are resulting from actors’ navigation between an international neoliberal normative structure, and Tanzania’s own normative structure that is shaped by institutional and ideational legacies. First, I show how the official state rhetoric is convergent with neoliberal ideas associated to agricultural development. Then, I explore the discrepancies between official policies and discourse, arguing that practices resulting from these policies are the result of actors’ navigation between divergent normative systems. I exemplify my argument with two examples. First, I focus on the consultations associated to the review of the New Land Policy. Second, I analyze village mapping practices in selected rural areas of Tanzania.

CONVERGENCE OF INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RHETORIC ON LAND INVESTMENTS AND DEVELOPMENT

In Tanzania, most recent agricultural policies—Kilimo Kwanza (2009), South Agricultural Growth Corridor (SACGOT, 2010), New Alliance for Food Security and nutrition initiative (New Alliance, 2012), Big Results Now (BRN, 2012), and the National Agriculture Policy (NAP, 2013)—are rooted within a national framework: the Tanzania’s National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty I and II or MKUKUTA I and II. Both MKUKUTA I and II are in fact agreements over strategic funding of policies resulting from a dialogue undertaken between major donors, international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the Tanzanian government[1].

MKUKUTA II provides guidelines for the development of the agricultural sector which are based on several assumptions highly influenced by neoliberal principles. It insists on the fact that surveying and securing land rights for both Tanzanians and investors are crucial to: reduce land conflicts; it aims at giving smallholders access to credit to promote investment of their assets through an expected increased productivity; and it wishes to provide a conducive business environment which will foster much needed agricultural foreign-direct investments (FDI)[2].

Nationally, the dominant discourse on agricultural development and reform of land policy is aligned with the key principles highlighted in MKUKUTA II. The Ministry for Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development (Ministry of land) often details the government’s commitment to ensure agricultural and economic development and reduce land conflicts through its ambitious land titling and land use-map program. According to the official rhetoric, planning, surveying and mapping land in Tanzania is both promoting security of land tenure for citizens, and fostering land investments.

REVIEW OF THE NATIONAL LAND POLICY

The process of reviewing the 1995 Land Policy started in August 2015, but the rationale for the timing of this change remains unclear. The document states that it was triggered by “a changing national and global context, which have induced changes in the requirements for the land sector”[3]. Although it mentions population growth as a factor contributing to change in land dynamics, it doesn’t explain further any other changing dynamic.

Officially, this new Land Policy aims at “providing a framework for articulating the central role of land in socio-economic development” by implementing an “effective land tenure system” which ensures “equitable allocation and access to land for all citizens” for an optimal use of land resources. After conducting “wide-ranging public consultations with stakeholders”, the Ministry of land released an official first draft, which was adopted by stakeholders in November 2016[4]. Even though the document states that the policy was endorsed by the Cabinet, and is currently being implemented by the Ministry of Land, there is still much uncertainty about the process. Because of lack of transparency, it is not clear yet if and when the policy will be effectively replacing the previous one.

The foreword of the new Land Policy gives the impression that the review process was consultative, democratic and national in the sense that views from different actors were collected and considered. Yet, the extent to which such objectives have been achieved remains unclear.

Official figures released by the Ministry state that two-days public consultations were conducted in eight different zones[5]. While the first day was spent to consult various stakeholders, the second, was reserved for consulting villagers. In total, the Ministry of land is claiming having visited twenty villages by zone. This seems high, given the time spent by zone. Moreover, the process of consultation with villagers is not explained, meaning that it is difficult to evaluate the authenticity of consultative processes at village level and to which degree freedom of speech was allowed[6]. In the Tanzanian context, where only one party has been ruling the country since Independence, one wonders to what extent people have been able to express themselves freely, especially in front of state officials. In the words of one of my informant: “if villagers were consulted with government officials and leaders in the same room, of course, they will not speak up [they will be scared]”[7].

Regarding consultations with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), it appears that several were not informed in advance of the consultations giving them a very short window of time to prepare their comments on the New Land Policy.

Also, CSOs felt powerless during the process. Although the consultations trigger collaboration and a fruitful dialogue between CSOs—several CSOs worked together on a joint position paper, their interactions with the officials of the Ministry of land were unidirectional. Most of them were under the impression that their inputs will not be considered seriously. In the words of one representative of a CSO:

“Consultations came as a surprise for us. We were not prepared. Moreover, the process was fake. If you look at how it is presented, it looks like they undertook the whole process seriously, but few people were consulted and are not representative of the country […] When we participated in the consultations in Morogoro, it was made very clear to us that it was the end of it. They will not be considering our suggestions”[8].

In addition, several of CSOs’ requests were left unanswered or ignored. For example, the Ministry of land refused to disclose key documents related to the New Land Policy, such as the strategic implementation plan of the strategy.[9] The Ministry of land also remained silent on the next steps, leaving ambiguity about what will happen next. As stated by one of my informant:

“They are [Ministry of land and the government] speeding up the whole process. We have no luxury of time. We cannot stop or exert any control over the process. And we have not seen the strategic plan of implementation. In the end, we don’t really know what will be in the policy.”[10]

MAPPING VILLAGES

In coherence with MKUKUTA’s strategy, titling and mapping land in Tanzania are depicted as crucial to ensure a productive use of land assets by increasing tenure security for citizens and investors. The Ministry of Land’s Program for planning, surveying and land titling in Tanzania (PPSL) is expected to reduce unplanned settlements, decrease land conflicts, increase the use of land as a collateral for loans among smallholders, and facilitate land administration (registration and revenue collection).[11]

Regarding village land, PPSL envisages a sequence that starts with providing villages with land-use maps, before issuing titles in the form of certificate of customary rights of occupancy (CCROs) to villagers. Land-use maps are conceived as tools for planning and guiding land development, and they usually have a ten-years period of validity[12]. The program explicitly states that processes of planning, surveying and titling rural land will be undertaken in partnership with local communities, thereby “increasing public awareness on land related policies, laws and guidelines”, and contribute to local “capacity building and training” on land management[13].

The mapping process itself consists in determining the village GPS coordinates through a cadastral process, and in identifying and delimiting village sections for current and future land usage. Generally, village sections comprise: areas reserved for residential, agricultural, and social services, and areas for pasture. In addition, in some districts, land sections have been specifically reserved for current or future land investors.

Villagers are usually involved to some extent in the process of drafting the land-use map, as the process requires each village to name two representatives to collaborate with the district planner and surveying experts from the District and the Ministry of land. The local reception to the mapping process is generally positive as it is perceived by villagers as a way to formalize their use of village land[14], and to help in solving conflict issues over boundaries with other villages.

However, few villagers are informed and participate in this mapping process. Moreover, their power over it and its outcomes is very minimal. The planners and surveyors have the final authority, leading to practices of consultation that are more procedural than collaborative because villagers are not allowed to significantly contribute to the process or to contest higher authorities.

For example, in a village in Pwani region, sunshine at a specific time of the day was traditionally used to identify village’s demarcations. The village representatives asked the planning team to wait for the “right timing” for them to identify correctly the boundaries of their village. Their request was refused and therefore, the village’s boundaries were delimited approximately. Unsurprisingly, it led to a problematic land-use map because the identified boundaries were wrong. Despite repetitive demands from the village for correctives to their land-use map and an explanation of the problem with the mapping process, they were unable to proceed any change since the Ministry of land resolved the issue by stating that changes are not allowed.

Moreover, the Ministry of land put forward a cadastral mapping of villages that does not necessarily consider historical and local understandings of demarcations. It favors an idea of what a developed village should look like, privileging straight boundaries over real demarcations, thereby leading to villages’ land dispossession. For instance, in a village of Kagera region, several villages have ended up losing parts of their land. Among other examples, one of the village received its land-use plan and village land title in 2015. The leaders quickly realized that a whole section of their village was missing from the map. The land-use map draws a straight line rather than the curve which was necessary to include this part of the village. Following a village meeting, the village decided collectively to refuse the maps provided to them. When the leaders raised the issue with the District and explained why they refused to recognize the validity of their land-use map, they were threatened. The District made clear to them that by refusing to agree with this land-use plan, their village may end up losing all its land. Powerless, the leaders were afraid of the consequences of their resistance. They complied and signed the document, preferring losing a part of their village land than risking losing it all[15].

As demonstrated in this last example, even though some villagers may contest the state’s authority in mapping and planning, they generally comply without much resistance. Villagers’ reaction is anchored into the historically constituted relation of governance between the state and citizens. Tanzania is a country which has undergone right after Independence a massive state-led villagisation program which has displaced forcefully about five million rural Tanzanian during the 70s[16]. People perceive government’s authorities as providers but also as the ultimate decision-makers. As one farmer states eloquently about the local perception of the supreme authority of the government: “Serikali ni serikali [government is the government]. If the government tells you that you must go, you should go. […] Government is like a machete: both sides cut” (Free translation, Interview 49, Farmer, 2017).

Therefore, I argue that current mapping practices undergoing in Tanzania share striking similarities with the way villagisation was conceived and implemented. It demonstrates the lasting impact of institutional legacies. In fact, Scott’s argument is still very relevant to understand the way the state is implementing its land-mapping programme. Scott argues that villagisation in Tanzania was a large-scale engineering project undertaken to render society and territory more legible and administrable, but also privileging a rationality of simplification and standardization—based on a high modernist ideology.[17] Thus, land mapping practices are informed by features of both institutions. The language and the form of practices is coherent with the official neoliberal discourse, while the process itself is influenced by a different conception of the role of the state, which has been historically constituted and enforced.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, as demonstrated by these two examples of consultation practices, historical institutional and ideational legacies still shape significantly governance practices in Tanzania, despite the official adoption of neoliberal discourse and policies. The state is conceptualized, as it was during the socialist era, as the only instance that could provide correct guidance in development. Therefore, understanding how ‘things are done’ in Tanzania requires acknowledging the agency of actors in navigating these ideational divergent norms.

[14] Most villages already have and use village land use maps to manage their village land. However, those are usually draw by hand locally, and do not display the technical and scientific character of the official land use maps.

[15] Interview 14: Local leaders, Village in Kagera Region, August 2016.

[17] Scott, James C. Seeing like a state. How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. (Yale Agrarian Studies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).

Joanny Bélair is a third-year Ph.D. student at the School of political studies, University of Ottawa. Her dissertation is titled: Land investments in Tanzania: a local perspective on the political economy of agri-food projects. Data presented in this paper was collected during a seven-months field research, conducted mostly in rural areas of Tanzania, in two regions: Pwani and Kagera.

Though many feminist and postcolonial scholars question the utility of sport as a platform for social development (Giles and Lynch 2012), sport-based development initiatives – particularly in Kenya – continue to receive significant funding and media attention. This working paper discusses a group of young Maasai men who are members of development-focused cricket team called the Maasai Cricket Warriors. Founded in 2007 by a South African conservationist, the Maasai Cricket Warriors have succeeded in attracting international sponsorship while being of questionable benefit to its members and their community.

The ostensible successes of this sport-for-development organization are complicated by several issues which were gleaned through my participant observations with them over a series of months in mid-2016. I will analyze how this group of young Maasai compete for the benefits provided by donors both amongst each other and with the donor itself. This paper also describes how the competition for scarce resources is intensified by the racialized structures that Maasai must navigate in order to profit from donor programs. Recent conflict between pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia underscores the fact that community-based conservation has done little to ameliorate poverty among Maasai. As Maasai men are often represented as archetypes of ‘noble savagery’, they must sometimes reproduce the gendered racial stereotypes which development programs often claim to work against (Galaty 2002).

The first section of the paper explains the origins of the Maasai Cricket Warriors and how they’ve been styled as champions of women’s rights despite the challenging nature of effecting successful gender work in a patriarchal community. The second section describes a tournament in Laikipia in 2016 to which the team was invited to play. I explain how the journey out of their community and across a racialized landscape challenges the ability of these men to represent themselves positively and forces them to succumb to various negative, gendered stereotypes. In the third section, I discuss how the team and the programs its involved with are being utilized by select members to gain access to livelihood opportunities in awkward accordance with how their partners envision. These ‘opportunities’, however, are not accessed equally by all members, and the team’s goals of effecting legitimate social change is overshadowed by the un-officiated competition for limited economic windfalls.

Cricket and Conservation

Il Polei Group Ranch on the northern edge of Laikipia County has been a centre of baboon research since the mid-1980s, driven by the work of California-based research initiative, The Ewaso Baboon Project (EBP). As researchers working with EBP often form bonds with the young men they employ, some have tried to show their thanks by spearheading small development projects or helping connect the community to a donor or sponsor. One project manager who worked with EBP in the mid-2000s, an accomplished South African female cricketer named Aliyah Bauer, began teaching young men cricket as an after-school activity.

With her connections in South Africa’s cricket community, Bauer was able to secure the sponsorship of an organization called Land Man Standing (LMS). LMS works to promote cricket in Africa by introducing a more spectator-friendly version of the game, and promoting its accessibility for lower income communities. Support from LMS helped the Warriors evolve into an organized sporting entity. LMS helped provide the team with equipment, media exposure, and several trips to South Africa to participate in cricket exhibitions.

Soon after forging a relationship with LMS, the team experienced a falling out with Bauer, believing she had made promotional deals without their knowledge. Despite the travel opportunities that playing cricket has afforded them, most of the team’s members continue to live a subsistence lifestyle. Though some older members work in local government or as baboon trackers, most of the team are jobless.

Sign marking the Maasai Cricket Warriors’ field at Il Polei Group Ranch.

Despite a lack of resources, the team claimed to be feeling strong as I commenced working with them in April of 2016. They were preparing for a tournament at the famous Ol Pejeta Conservancy where they would compete before a large crowd against several of the best amateur cricket teams in Kenya. They were excited by the return of their star bowler Mpati, an energetic young player who was coming off a six-month suspension for becoming drunk and embarrassing the team on their trip to South Africa the previous summer. Ledama, the team’s assistant captain, explained that the Warriors had a constitution which they took very seriously. No member was allowed to put himself above his teammates and acting selfishly was grounds for suspension or dismissal.

As the Maasai Cricket Warriors are an all-male organization, their constitution was also an opportunity to present themselves as agents of social change. Since ignoring gender issues in the modern era of development is to make oneself virtually ineligible for funding, the team’s primary social objective was to advocate for the rights of Maasai women by discouraging the practice of Female Genital Cutting (FGC). Though FGC is a legitimate challenge in Maasai communities, the team’s attention to this tremendously complex subject poses questions of feasibility and intention. It is well established that donor institutions working with Maasai often place an inadequately informed and carelessly executed emphasis on gender. According to Hodgson (1999, 122), the “ambivalent attitudes of Western actors towards prosaic aspects of Maasai culture has led communities to be politically and economically consolidated in a manner that insists upon masculinity as fundamental to Maasai culture.” By taking their warrior identity and deploying it in defense of women, the team could be seen as ‘working on’ gender issues without having to confront the issue directly. When I asked the team about the specifics of their gender work, Olenku, the lead captain, conceded that they had never conducted any work to reduce FGC in Il Polei because the elders would not permit it. Instead their goal was to raise awareness globally and hope that foreign pressure would lead to policy reform.

The Tournament

About one week before the tournament, Ledama asked me if I would act as the team’s driver for the event. Though Il Polei is less than two hours from Ol Pejeta, the journey would involve traversing one of Africa’s most enduringly colonial landscapes. While most of Kenya’s farmlands were returned to Africans at independence, Laikipia has remained mostly in the hands of white Kenyans and foreign owners, many of whom combine cattle ranching with wildlife conservation and safari tourism. Maasai who claim an indigenous right to Laikipia live only in fragmented parcels on the county’s dryer peripheries, and though many large ranches try to assist Maasai by supporting local schools or clinics, ceding land to assist Maasai communities is never treated as a legitimate possibility.

The event was to commence on the evening of a Friday and I met the team that afternoon at their practice pitch at Il Polei. As the team assembled their equipment, Ledama asked how much money I would be charging to transport the team to the tournament. I explained that since I would be conducting research the use of my vehicle was a donation. I would be happy to receive a few thousand shillings for diesel, but otherwise wanted no money. Ledama explained that LMS had allocated 20,000 shillings to hire a bus to take them to the tournament. He asked if I would agree to tell the organizers that I wanted the full amount. Ledama would give me money for diesel and that he and the team would keep the rest. I was uneasy but agreed.

Entering into this private nature reserve was a surreal experience for myself and many of the Warriors. While dominating the Laikipia plateau, Ol Pejeta is surrounded by smaller parcels of subdivided land held back by an electric fence. On the north-eastern edge of Ol Pejeta is a region called Endana, where many members of Il Polei Group Ranch have migrated in recent years in search of better pastures. The fence line between Ol Pejeta and Endana represents a deep social and ecological rift. While the plains of Ol Pejeta feature grasses thick enough to conceal whole herds of zebra, Endana has been degraded down to its bare, black soil. Witnessing the plenitude of Ol Pejeta alongside men unable to feed their own livestock was unsettling.

The following morning the tournament got underway on a large plateau in the centre of the game reserve. A crowd of almost exclusively white spectators – a mix of landowners from Laikipia and expatriates from Nairobi – congregated under a large tent where food and beer was sold. Herds of gazelles grazed to the sides of the pitch, with the snow-capped Mount Kenya setting an idyllic backdrop. The Warriors took to the pitch in their finest Maasai regalia – over which they strapped shin pads and protective gloves. The Maasai played two matches on Saturday, one against a team of white Kenyans from Nairobi and one against a team from western Kenya. The Warriors lost both, and were extremely disappointed.

To ease their disappointment, their white Kenyan opponents offered to buy the Warriors sodas or beers. The offer of a drink came with the obligation to socialize, and so the Maasai joined the spectators inside the large tent. The conversations between the Maasai and their white Kenyan opponents were cordial but patronizing. The whites made many jokes about Maasai polygamy, asking how many cows they would need to marry the Maasai’s sisters. Some team members seemed comfortable in the environment, while those with weaker English struggled to grasp the whites’ sense of humor.

During this reception, I had an opportunity to speak with Ken, an Australian cricket coach and the tournament’s lead organizer. He was emphatic of how valuable an opportunity it was for Maasai to be able to participate in events such as these, particularly how it gave them the ability to travel and to forge relationships that could benefit them down the road.

“At an event like this,” he said, “you’ve got wealthy people not just from Laikipia but all around the world. These guys can see the Warriors play and if they like what they’re made of – not just as athletes but as individuals, they could help them out with some sort of opportunity that could change their lives forever.” The sort of sponsor-driven mobility Ken was referring to was not a mere abstraction. It was not uncommon that foreigners visiting Laikipia’s group ranches would ‘adopt’ a family or an individual – particularly a man or women with athletic promise.

Contest of benefits

On Sunday morning, the team arrived at the pitch anxious for their first game, but as we approached the field there was great unrest among them, directed at a man and woman sitting by the pitch dressed in Maasai regalia. As it turned out, the young man – named Kasana – was a suspended member of the team who had overseen managing their website and email account. A few months earlier, a dispute had erupted between Kasana and the team because, while in Nairobi attending university, he had conducted an interview and spoken about the team without insisting that all members be included. When I asked Olenku about the conflict, he said that Kasana had violated their constitution by using the team’s image for personal gain. I pointed out that if the team depended on digital publicity, that Kasana’s work while away at school was probably to their benefit. Olenku agreed that digital publicity was crucial to the team’s success, but that including all members in all decisions was fundamental to the team’s constitution.

Accompanying Kasana was a small corps of Kenyan journalists who had contacted him via the team’s email wanting to do a story on their involvement in the tournament. Despite his expulsion Kasana was still the keeper of the team’s online existence, and as far as the media was concerned, Kasana’s invitation to film the team constituted sufficient permission.

When Ken arrived at the pitch, Olenku asked him if Kasana could be asked to leave. Ken was dismissive of Olenku’s complaint. “I don’t care about your politics!” he told him. “We’re trying to help all of you!”

Olenku added that Kasana had brought journalists, and that they were being filmed without their permission. Ken became further agitated, and pointed out that the attention of journalists was crucial for their success.

“If Kasana has brought the media then I say good for him! If you don’t want to speak to the media that is your choice, but that’s the whole reason you’ve all come out.”

When the Warriors took to the field, I had the opportunity to hear Kasana’s side of the story. He explained that he was disappointed by the conflict enveloping the team. He verified that he had conducted media relations without his teammates, but claimed that because he possessed connections through university, it made sense for him to market the team in his own capacity. Since he believed he had acted in the team’s interest, he chose to attend the tournament in defiance of his suspension.

Ken is interviewed by journalists while Kasana (left) assists with lighting.

Kasana explained that the conflict was also routed in the team’s work against FGC. He explained that Beatrice, the young woman accompanying him, was helping him in a renewed effort to raise awareness about FGC. Kasana complained that the team were not genuine in their pledge to assist women, and that they had dismissed him when he tried to organize an FGC awareness event in Endana a few months before. The event went ahead without the team’s support, and Kasana claims that team was furious with him afterwards that their own sisters had not been included.

As the Warriors played I spoke to Ken once again, who was clearly aggravated by what he saw as an attempt by Olenku to politicize the tournament. “It really stupid,” he told me. “We give these guys’ such amazing opportunities and all they do is fight amongst themselves. For us, we just measure our success by how many young people are playing cricket. No sponsors want to work with people that are divided. The Il Polei guys are the core of the team but Kasana is still the public face, so neither of them is more important than the other. They need Kasana very badly but none of them realize it.”

We returned our attention to the pitch as the Warrior’s match neared its end. In the intense final minutes, the Maasai clinched a victory, and the crowd was pleased to see them redeem themselves after the previous day’s defeats. As it would soon be time to depart, Ledama was anxious to speak with Ken about the funds promised for transportation. Ken had not expected the team to be driven by a white associate, and there was no mistaking the fact that I was not charging the team for my services. I was just out of earshot when Ledama spoke to Ken, who was obviously very annoyed to hear him request 20,000 shillings. Ken responded by telling Ledama that any money spent that weekend would not be available for future travel opportunities.

Sensing that my involvement had made the Warriors appear greedy, I advised Ledama to request only five thousand shillings, and to tell Ken it was for diesel. Ledama distributed the funds among the Warriors, who each used a portion to buy a small bundle of qat (a locally-grown stimulant) which they chewed quietly on the drive through Laikipia’s white ranches and back to Il Polei Group Ranch.

Conclusion

For Maasai in Laikipia, and for other indigenous peoples around the globe, advocating for one’s community often involves departing from spaces of segregation and across landscapes that are racialized, fragmented, or traumatic (Niezen 2013). Segregated in Laikipia’s overcrowded group ranches, members of the Maasai Cricket Warriors and many of their families struggle daily to support themselves. But to seize the opportunity that the cricket team offers, they must subject themselves to the patronizing experience of entering into spaces where they are otherwise unwelcomed.

Despite the politics enveloping the team, LMS felt all members were benefitting equally because attending the event was the ‘opportunity in itself’. The fact that Kasana was not playing on the field mattered little as, at least in the organizer’s mind, the real game was being played in the reception tent. But what many of the Maasai participants really wanted from their partner was an economic opportunity, and the social opportunities available under the tent required these men to perform stereotypical roles which not all were able or willing to fulfill. Though LMS may support the gender work of the team in theory, they fail to appreciate the extent to which the persistent failure of development projects among Maasai have largely been due to ambivalence on gendered issues (Hodgson 1999; 2011).

Maasai poses with team of British expats after defeating them in a consolation final.

The conflict between Kasana and his former team also speaks to the importance of digital literacy in a neoliberal development setting. People with digital literacy in rural Kenya have the potential to become de facto gatekeepers for donors wanting to work with communities. The importance of digital literacy does indeed offer opportunities for youth empowerment, but like other categories such as ‘pastoralist’ or ‘women’, we must not overlook the uneven nature of the youth landscape itself. That Kasana had an advantage over his teammates due to his digital literacy was of no concern to the team’s sponsors. If the team could not present itself in a united and accessible fashion, their sponsors believed they weren’t worthwhile supporting.

Overall, the issues that surfaced at this tournament reveal that Maasai must often lend dignity to racialized land structures if they wish to access livelihood opportunities. With recent land conflicts in Laikipia potentially signalling a wider ‘unsettling’ of white landownership in Kenya (McIntosh 2016), community-based development will undoubtedly remain a site where the marginality of Maasai is both produced and contested.

]]>https://mambo.hypotheses.org/993/feed2‘We do not want any more masters’: Ruins, planning and the “messy labours” of the urban poor.https://mambo.hypotheses.org/985
https://mambo.hypotheses.org/985#commentsTue, 07 Feb 2017 09:56:53 +0000http://mambo.hypotheses.org/?p=985Wangui Kimari, “We do not want any more masters’: Ruins, planning and the “messy labours” of the urban poor”, Mambo! Volume XIV (5), 2016.

Introduction

Amidst the animated conversations about recent national and county development plans for the city, one wonders when Nairobi’s real residents will actually appear. In one of the most recent iterations of this master planning, the Integrated Urban Development Masterplan for the city of Nairobi (NIUPLAN), the now normalized images of futuristic highway networks and buildings (that appear to all derive from a singular neoliberal toolbox) persist unabated. Did the people fall from the many anticipated skyscrapers and super thoroughfares of this aspirational ‘world-class city’? Or are they buried under the literal and literary rubble of these master plans? While there are gestures towards participatory consultation that one notes in the NIUPLAN, in the litany of pages devoted to this document we still do not seem to see or hear the 60-70% of this city who live in the poor zones that account for only 6% of Nairobi’s geography. Instead we encounter the globally sanctioned trademarks of what a city should look like; the fervent ambition to be ‘world-class’1 that endures as a ‘regulating fiction’ for much of our urban life (Robinson 2002). I argue here that despite their invisibility, it is the residents from these Nairobi ruins, its most marginalized spaces, who will determine the viability of the NIUPLAN in their neighbourhoods and in Nairobi broadly. For if we are to track the “long-running drama” (Manji 2015, 7) of master planning in Nairobi, we see that within and despite the imprints of colonial zoning, it is less the overdetermined templates of formal spatial management and more the ‘messy-labours’ (Simone 2015) of urban ruin residents that shape our city geographies for present and future.

Not convinced by the topical promises of urban reform, and that are captured in neoliberal development plans such as Kenya Vision 2030 and its proliferating spatial progeny (of note are Nairobi Metro 2030 and the NIUPLAN 2014-2030) my PhD research dwells in the stories of residents from poor urban settlements in Nairobi, what I refer to here as ruins, to explore how both the material and discursive practices of these plans are experienced. I sit in these stories of urban entanglements—of innovation, violence, loss, resilience and redemption—in order to historicize urban spatial management in Nairobi from these marginalized spaces, and particularly those in the East of the city. Through tracking both the implementation and the absence of proposed urban interventions in Mathare, Nairobi (and it is usually the latter), I attend to how urban spatial management has shaped residents on both a public and intimate level. To these ends I call attention to three urban events:

The continuities between colonial and postcolonial urban spatial management, and in particular the persistence of “selective non-planning” (Yiftachel 2009) in certain parts of the city that creates intentional zones of non-inclusion without even the most basic of infrastructural services;

The increasing use of militaristic violence to constitute urban governance in the neoliberal present, and;

How the alternative urban histories and subjectivities that emerge from these ruins what will direct us towards a truly more just city, and one that is altogether more inclusive than any master plan can ever conjure. This is principally the work of young people.

Before I contextualize and connect these three threads, I need to elaborate on the category of the ruin that is a key framing in my work. Informed by Stoler (2008), thinking with ruins allows us to:

Trace the fragile and durable substance and signs, the visible and visceral senses in which the effects of empire are reactivated and remain. But ruination is more than a process. It is also a political project that lays waste to certain peoples and places, relations, and things. To think with ruins of empire is to emphasize less the artifacts of empire as dead matter or remnants of a defunct regime than to attend to their reappropriations and strategic and active positioning within the politics of the present (Stoler 2008, 196).

My work focuses on these ‘durable substance(s) and signs’ of colonial/postcolonial formal spatial management projects, how these are said to shape Mathare residents’ subjectivities, and the manner in which these circulated positionings are engaged with by residents to develop different self and urban possibilities for present and future. In tracking the histories of Mathare through both the archive and collective memory of residents, consistent connections are made between urban governance in the present and past: the remnants and reactivations of empire that compel many residents to think of themselves as Matigari—’the ones who survived the bullets’ and keep surviving them (Wa Thiongo 1987). Matigari in this sense can be a metaphor for shared consciousness in this place where the weight of the coeval histories of the city feels heavier on the backs of the poor, as it is them who have suffered through all of its urban charades. Thinking with ruins and Matigari connects the embattled reflections by 80 year old Monica Njeri about her 60+ years tenure in Village 1 where she has never ‘seen the government’, with the plight of the youth group owned entrepreneurial car wash in Bondeni whose members are constantly besieged by the police, and often fatally, for “dragging water from the main pipes”; water that should have been in place decades ago. These stories spell out all the follies of Nairobi and belie the grand narrative that they are fixable through apolitical and technocratic sleights of hand contained in master plans, and whose genesis (and dependable saviour) is always more “business.” Inevitably the expansion of ruins and precarious lives will make us question the costs of what it means to become a “world-class city” (urbans that really should be called world-waste cities); clones of EuroAmerican provenance and that have been normalized to mean hyper-modern and hyper-inaccessible. At the same time, and as I argue here, these margins must be the locations from where we chart out city futures since the ruin is also always a site for “vital refiguration” (Stoler 2008, 194). That despite constituting long histories of grave neglect are at once “always broken, but always resounding” (Simone 2015, 2).

To demonstrate these arguments in a clearer fashion, below I give a brief history of Mathare space, and connect this to broader historical urban spatial management practices in Nairobi. Subsequent to this I also highlight some of the ground work that, consciously and unconsciously, contests the violence of urban planning from within ruins and in ways that challenges both the history and futures of this city. This exercise is provoked by the question that haunts and undergirds this research endeavour: how is the value of life in Nairobi determined by spatial management grids that decide not just who lives and who dies, but also how should people who are left to die live?

“I live in Mathare not Nairobi”

While Mathare constituency is seen by some of its residents as the land of temporary 10 x 10 shack dwellings and a place that signals no spatial planning or “modern” architecture, it is important to recognize that it has emerged from a long history of being part of the exclusions of both colonial and postcolonial urban spatial management practices (Medard 2010; Torres-Rodrigues 2010; Myers 2015). Although it covers an area that is only 3 square kilometres in size and is likely the smallest constituency in Nairobi, it is seen as a relentless impediment to the “modern” city and a constant thorn in the side to county authorities, the police and its elected political representatives.

Both oral narratives and archival data document that Mathare has existed for longer than the myopic “rural-urban” migration narratives about “squatter settlements” and “slums” in Nairobi would allow us to believe. While villages were documented in Mathare Valley, what is now part of Mathare constituency,2 from as early as 1921 (Chiuri 1978; White 1990), it appears that human settlement began to increase in the 1940s and 50s. As the contours of Mathare confer, this area was a quarry and became a central site to excavate rocks that would contribute to building many of the architectures that constitute the ‘functioning core’ of the city centre. Many of those who were working here later settled in its vicinity. During these pre-independence years, while a medley of employment laws controlled the presence of Africans in the city (White/Nairobi Master Plan 1948, 6; Chiuri 1978, 4), they were allowed to settle in this area as it is in the less favourable low lying eastern part of town where other African settlements such as Pumwani were and still are located (White 1990). Furthermore, the East was also an area that was deemed less desirable for European settlement as it had poor drainage, and would later host sewage treatment plants and other noxious industry (Otiso 2005; Hake 1977, 88). In sum, despite the many measures taken to keep Africans away from Nairobi, they were needed for the machinations of the city and so were confined to the ‘inferior’ geography of these eastern coordinates. This zoning, intended to quell white fears of the social and biological contagion of African bodies, allowed that this community could persist, albeit precariously, within city limits. In the postcolonial period Mathare continues to be a space that is not included even in the most basic urban planning infrastructure of the city. Despite this, not too long after independence, it was still regularly raided for tax collection (Hake 1977, 161). In all of these periods it is always depicted as a site of overcrowding, and conjured as the bedrock of crime, prostitution, illegal alcohol brewing and ‘parasites’; violent imaginaries that are said to be embodied, above all, by its young population. The ‘slum’ is therefore taken as the immoral part of the urban form while it’s more middle and upper class constituencies are seen to be its moral body. Furthermore, due to the perpetual preoccupations to make Nairobi a ‘global’ city this space becomes the “anti-city”; in straddling a super highway and two main transport arteries into the downtown core is seen to cast a long shadow over the established and aspired prosperities of this African urban.

Therefore, while surrounded by legal and tenured city infrastructures Mathare was and is still included in planning by its very exclusion. It is important to note that this is an disregard firmly anchored within the complicities of the state; a situation that evidences informality not as the antithesis of formality, but a state of affairs that includes both as co-constitutive processes that ‘fold’ into each other (McFarlane 2012; Roy 2009, 826). In this regard, while it maintains the area of space delimited by the quarry and extends slightly in an eastern direction, like many poor urban settlements in the city its presence is accepted with ambivalence while it continues to be omitted from the “development impulse” that Manji (2015) discusses. Thus, over the years, it has taken on the contradiction of being at once within and without urban development; it is regarded as a necessary part of the city and yet planning continues around it without receiving any of the service benefits implied from being within the municipality’s jurisdiction.

This historical neglect is evident in the dearth of basic water and sanitation services for residents, the absence of substantive educational and health facilities as well as a lack of tenure security (Muungano Support Trust et al 2012). What’s more, this sinister exceptionalism further legitimized by the imagined positionings of its residents is also seen to provoke and justify a plethora of very violent acts committed, overwhelmingly, by the police and the city council. While these ‘state-society imaginaries’ are never as inflexible as often understood, (see, for example, Garmany (2013) for an examination of this in Fortaleza, Brazil), the combined impacts of both structural neglect and extra-legal state violence indicate a spatial particularity that has engendered a situation often considered one of “the most difficult urban environments in East Africa” (Muungano Support Trust et al 2012, 4).

Not Joining the Masterplan Party.

A cursory history of Mathare was needed to contextualize the ruination that it is entangled within: a political, social, economic and ecological disregard that both creates and criminalizes this space. Throughout the history of the three previous plans for Nairobi (1927, 1948 and 1973), very little is seen to have changed in this part of the city—a feeling that is reiterated frequently by its residents as well as scholars (Myers 2015; Medard 2010). Nonetheless, in recognizing this long history of indifference, residents, and particularly the young, work to fill the vacuums created by this abandonment. Mine is not a bid to romanticize often imperfect systems to deliver water, security and sanitation services etc., nonetheless, the persistent youth-work to equalize geography, in ways that have not been made possible by previous formal urban interventions, needs to be affirmed. And in embodying a reciprocated mistrust for these master plans, this work dampens the bourgeois fervour that accompanies the urban visions and proposals that do not make them visible. This is why many residents I spoke to conveyed multiple versions of the following statement: “I don’t live in Nairobi, I live in Mathare”.

In attending to this disregard in the areas of ‘blackness’ that he conceptualizes, Simone (2015) speaks of these residents of ruins who:

Learned to live in the implosion of old orders grinding to a halt, of being the example that teaches a populace how to watch what happens when a portion of its citizenry is unmoored from the basic supports of life. It has learned to live with incessant transience, quickly deciding how to recoup opportunity from sudden detours and foreclosures (Simone 2015, 7).

In contrast to improvement, it is often master plans that provide exactly these “detours” and ‘foreclosures.’ Evidencing this are the statements in the NIUPLAN about the need to tackle the housing crisis, but that are followed in quick succession by remarks about removal and resettlement (NIUPLAN 2015, 6-28). Similarly, contained within this new blueprint is information about enhancing, for example, transport facilities, but nothing about the displacements that will likely be occasioned by these processes, nor whether there will be adequate compensation given to those who will inevitably be forced to relocate. Furthermore, an unspoken though normalized practice that haunts these projects is the use of police force to make sure the ostensibly ‘business unusual’ of Vision 2030 will go on (see Medard 2010; Manji 2015 and Amnesty 2013 on the violence of both the administrative police and city council during forced evictions). While the sheer murkiness of the numerous headings and subheadings of the NIUPLAN make it difficult to discern whether there is indeed a comprehensive pro-poor project at hand, the snapshots conferred above inspire what Myers refers to as a ‘jaundiced optimism’ (Myers 2015).

Conclusion

Notwithstanding the spectacle of hyper futuristic assemblages of city, and beyond the celebration of these global blueprints, the residents of this city appear where they have always been—on the ground and working for home. Examples of this are the marches and petitions to stop land-grabbing that most recently saw the removal of a corrupt village elder from Kosovo (Hospital Ward), or the establishment of ward based El Nino committees in a variety of villages. This resistance is also attested to by the large number, and continuous proliferation, of community groups that tackle garbage collection, incessant fires, bridge building, toilet maintenance, electricity and water provision. Unquestionably these actions manifest many situated contradictions and violences, but these are paradoxes that also reflect larger and more unequal local and global politico-economic practices.

Whether these imperfect actions confirm the ‘outlaw’ beginnings and natures of a marginalized area is beside the point. What we should look at is how these ‘barefoot activisms’ are more about creating a city where people can live and not just ‘do business.’ Referring to the hegemony of these plans and their persistent ineffectiveness, one of my interlocutors stated the following: “Masterplan? We do not want any more masters. They are going to build a sewage line but they don’t even build toilets. We need houses.”

This excoriation of technocratic planning is anchored within the painful realization that a 42 kilometre superhighway will be built faster than a house for a single mother; that the Nairobi Metro 2030 Vision Plan can make a decision as definitive as having a “Nairobi Philharmonic Orchestra” (Nairobi Metro 2030 2008, 79) but will not make any pronouncements about the exact number of toilets, clean water taps, clinics and access bridges that will be built in its margins. Therefore, a ‘strained relationship’ with the ongoing proposals for urban planning will definitely persist in Mathare – if they are even noted. And in recognizing the “long-running drama”, a telenovela actually, of master plan declarations that have never materialized in this part of the city, almost none of my interviewees speak with enthusiasm or even reference the spatial projects to come. These ruins will continue in their “own rules of operation” (Myers 2015, 332), uninspired by yet another proposal for Nairobi that does little to include them.

Speaking to the inherent disparities within formal planning documents in Nairobi Myers (2015) states that:

But until the yawning gap is narrowed between the elites’ visions and the experiences of ordinary city residents, all the master plans in the world will not lead to the growth of inclusive, relational cities with an improving quality of life and declining rates of inequalities (343). It appears that it is not just Mathare residents who are unenthusiastic about planning proposals. Experientially, city dwellers know that it is only from their determinations that poor neighbourhoods will change, and so we can continue to expect more grounded inattention to the proliferating urban blueprints from within the ever expanding city margins. The more the ‘world-class city’ is pursued on a national level , the clearer it will be that it is only through the ‘messy labours’ of ruins that this city will survive, regardless of what it says in this or the next masterplan.

County of Nairobi and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA). NIUPLAN/The projecton Integrated Urban Development Master Plan for the City of Nairobi in the Republic of Kenya (Final Report). Nairobi: County of Nairobi and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), 2014

Medard, C. “City Planning in Nairobi: The Stakes, the People, the Sidetracking.” In Nairobi Today: TheParadox of a Fragmented City, edited by H. Charton-Bigot and D Rodriguez-Torres, 25-60. Nairobi: IFRA,

Muungano Support Trust, Slum Dwellers International, University of Nairobi and University of Berkeley. Mathare Zonal Plan. Nairobi/Kenya: Collaborative Plan for Informal Settlement Upgrading. Nairobi/ Berkeley: Muungano Support Trust, Slum Dwellers International, University of Nairobi and University of California, 2012.

The Nairobi Metro 2030 strategy speaks about making Nairobi a “World Class African Metropolis.” In fact the full title of this strategy is: Nairobi Metro 2030: A World Class African Metropolis. For critiques of the ‘world-class’ and ‘global’ city categorizations see, for example, Robinson (2002) McFarlane (2012) and also Roy (2009).

Mathare constituency has six county assembly wards; these are Huruma, Ngei, Mabatini, Hospital, Mathare and Kia Maiko wards.

]]>https://mambo.hypotheses.org/985/feed1Bureaucracy versus land grabbing? Replacing the state in a fashionable debate in Tanzania.https://mambo.hypotheses.org/974
https://mambo.hypotheses.org/974#commentsMon, 11 Jul 2016 13:00:52 +0000http://mambo.hypotheses.org/?p=974Sina Schlimmer,”Bureaucracy versus land grabbing? Replacing the state in a fashionable debate in Tanzania”, Mambo! Volume XIV (4), 2016

“So how will you just make a grab on village land? If you want a village land you have to get first of all the consent of the villages and then go another step, make a transfer from village land to general land. And then from general land, getting the land as a derivative title of Tanzanian Investment Center. All these steps. If you have to go through all that kind of bureaucracy and you’re still making grab [rire] it’s either intended that you have that land but not land grabbing, no. That will not be possible. […] the land tenure system itself has got its own cumbersomeness. And you won’t be very successful in land grabbing. Show me just two or three successful land grabs in Tanzania where you can sit back and say OK, this one is successful.” (Interview with a Tanzanian land lawyer, 15/04/2015, Dar es Salaam). Tanzania is considered a target country of the recent wave of land investment which has been hitting the Global south since the late 2000s (Cotula, 2013 ; Deininger et al, 2011; German et al, 20111). The debate refers to a seemingly new dimension of land transfers, commonly qualified as land grabbing, whereby private stakeholders and multinationals acquire large plots in countries where land is supposed to be abundant, idle and unused. Seeking for food security, alternative energy sources or more material objects of speculation, investors from industrial and emergent countries negotiate land deals especially for the cultivation of food crops and biofuels. Regarding the situation of land investment in Tanzania, the Landmatrix, an international database capturing land deals all over the globe, records 36 land transfers between the Tanzanian government and foreign investment companies in 2016.2

This hype about the accumulation of land deals has triggered a heated controversy in Tanzania which is stimulated by politicians, journalists and experts. Many debates focus on the question whether a land deal can be labelled as a land grab or not. Civil society organisations and media actors are very committed to the issue and conduct research to identify cases of dubious land acquisitions. Their reports about land grabbing are contested by state agencies or land lawyers. As demonstrated in the introductory statement by an independent land expert from Dar es Salaam, one of their arguments is that the procedures of land acquisition by foreign investors are too complex to allow land grabs by outsiders. We argue that the debate about whether there is land grabbing or not veils an important scope of analysis, which is the role of state institutions and state- building processes in the negotiation, promotion, but also the circumvention of such land deals. Basing, firstly, on a review of the legal land acquisition processes and, secondly, on the land deal with the British company Sun Biofuels (SBF) in the district of Kisarawe, we defend the thesis that state actors keep on influencing the negotiation of land deals. Whereas the case of SBF has been viewed as a prime example of the foreignisation of land control in Tanzania, a more detailed analysis sheds light on the complex set of interactions between administrative authorities, institutions and state agents which form the core of the transaction. We argue that contradicting interests and power struggles on different bureaucratic levels can influence, detour or even circumvent the success of a land transfer.

Unbundling the Tanzanian state in the context of land deals

The international image of land grabs, shaped by an important media hype, refers to more or less arbitrary land acquisitions by foreigners whereby the investors’ interests are seen to be the driving forces of the transactions. It depicts dichotomous and asymmetric actor’s constellations, whereby a stronger (in terms of economic, knowledge-related and relational resources) stakeholder seizes the (more or less acknowledged) land rights of a weaker single or group of actors. States where land is grabbed are considered as being weak, fragile or even absent. This strong versus weak-dichotomy of the land grabbing discourse and the focus on the role of the investors disguises the complex negotiation processes which can provide significant insights into the analysis of state formation. Although some scholars have shifted their focus on the impact of the host states in land deals, the literature generally equates the state to a homogenous entity acting through one single voice (Wolfard et al, 2013). Secondly, the authors who address the intervention of host states often limit their scope on the collaboration between state elites and foreign investors. According to Sandra Evers et al. “the state […] acts as a crucial actor in creating the fertile ground for foreign investment” (Evers et al, 2013). If state actors or rules intervene in the deals they necessarily pave the way for land acquisitions.

However, in the case of Tanzania, land transactions are characterised by complex and sometimes contradicting interactions of state and non-state actors. In order to understand these land deals it is therefore important to unbundle the state in its different administrative levels and actors as well as the numerous bureaucratic steps of a transfer. The Tanzanian land laws provide a specific multi-level procedure which structures land deals with foreign investors. This process which is embodied in the Land Acts of 1999, constitutes the legal basis of state action in the context of land deals by involving various administrations and different levels of decision-making. In a first step we will outline this state-structured procedure. Then we will strengthen the argument with empirical data by discussing the negotiations of the land deal with Sun Biofuels in the district of Kisarawe.

Land deals according to the law: a fertile ground for state intervention and complex interplays

In Tanzania, most of the land deals which result from the recent rise of foreign investment concern village land3 (Locher & Sulle, 2014). Yet, foreign investors cannot directly acquire village land but can only obtain a derivative right of occupancy over general land. Therefore, a village land plot must first be converted into general land through a process which involves state actors on different administrative levels.4

On the national level: foreign investors are first received by the Tanzanian Investment Centre (TIC) in Dar es Salaam which is an interface between the government and private stakeholders. Hosting representatives of several state agencies, the role of the TIC is to facilitate the implementation of an investment project. Regarding land deals, the TIC is supposed to either propose an already demarcated land plot or to direct the investor to a specific region with suitable land for the investment

On the district level: once the investment project has been approved by the region the matter is transferred to the district level. Several departments of the district councils interact directly with the investors. The principal role of the land department is to identify a suitable plot for the project in one or several villages of the district. Land experts often assume an intermediary function between the investors, the council and the villages.

On the village level: according to the land laws, the villagers have the last say in the decision-making regarding the conversion of village land into general land. The issue must be discussed in one of the quarterly Village Assembly meetings. If the land conversion is approved by the village institutions, the decision is forwarded to the Ministry of Lands which gazettes the land for a period of 90

This summary is a simplified representation of the procedures. The actor’s constellations and levels of decision-making can vary from one investment project to another. However, it becomes clear that during a land transfer, the Tanzanian state unfolds into various institutions, actors and administrative levels which can shape the outcomes of the process. One can suppose that the multiplication of bureaucratic steps and decision processes creates a fertile ground for power struggles between stakeholders and authorities.

The local state at work: the role of district officials in the land deal with Sun Biofuels

The controversial case of the British company Sun Biofuels (SBF) in the district of Kisarawe reflects the complexity of land deals in Tanzania and, more particularly, a local state machinery at work (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2014), which negotiates and shapes land transactions. The company presented its investment proposal to the TIC and the district authorities in 2006 in which it declares that it “aims to become one of the biggest biofuel producer in the world5”. In fact, SBF planned to develop a jatropha plantation in order to produce biodiesel by leasing land from eleven villages in Kisarawe district. In May 2009 the company obtained its certificate of occupancy signed by the Commissioner for Lands who attests SBF’s right to occupy and develop 8211 hectares during a period of 99 years. Five years after the beginning of the negotiations the British company announces its bankruptcy (Wa Simbaye, 2011). The parts of SBF were first sold to the Mauritius based company 30 Degrees East, but in 2014 another investor, called Mtanga Foods Limited, announced a cattle-keeping project on the farm.

Since the bankruptcy in 2011 the case of SBF attracts the attention of media and NGOs on the local as well as the international level (The Citizen, 2013 ; Bergius, 2012 ; Carrington, 2011). Focusing on the negative impacts of the failure, the majority of the reports blame SBF for the breach of its promises. One of the principal commitments of SBF was to contribute to the socio-economic development of the villages by creating employment. In fact, the company declared that “it is expected that several thousand people will be employed6” in the course of the project’s progress. The failure of SBF and its successors to create long- term jobs for the promised number of villagers is one of the principal arguments of activists who qualify the company as a land grabber. The case of SBF is one of the first showcases of land grabbing by foreign investors in Tanzania. However, we argue that the discussion about whether the project can be considered as a land grab or not masks the determining role of state agents and the complex negotiation processes which shaped the land deal. Two empirical elements underline this argument. Firstly, central government institutions like the TIC or the Ministry of Lands are not the dominating decision-makers in the land deals. In fact, state agents at the district council in Kisarawe turn out to have a pivotal function in the negotiations of both the project of SBF and Mtanga Foods. Secondly, the negotiations about the land transfer have led to power conflicts between district officials and village leaders, the latter complaining that the district council was favouring the objectives of investors rather than advocating the interests of the citizens. District officials from Kisarawe act as intermediates and the district council is a platform between the central government, village institutions7 and representatives of the investing companies. For instance, the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which records SBF’s commitment to create employment and to contribute to development projects in the eleven villages is countersigned by the Chairman of the Kisarawe District Council (KDC). The provisions have principally been negotiated between representatives of the KDC and SBF. Furthermore, district officials influenced the procedures of the compensation by SBF which was paid to the District Council before being distributed among the different villages. According to the Tanzanian land laws, land owners must be compensated before the final conversion of village land. When SBF received the right of occupancy in 2009 thecompensation of thecommunity land was still pending. Several district officials had already addressed a document to the Ministry of Lands certifying the fulfilment of all the requirements by SBF in order to obtain the certificate, including the exercise of compensation (The Citizen, 2013).

However, the district administration’s impact on the negotiations cannot be limited on its function as a collaborator of the investor. Whereas several officials try to fast-track the administrative procedures of the land transfer8, others exercise their role as a supervisor of the incoming companies. One of the project managers of the shareholder Mtanga Foods describes the cumbersome bureaucracy on the district level. “to get here was quite an obstacle and a lot of bureaucratic involvements especially when you get down to the council level, the Kisarawe district council9”. By introducing a new investment activity which no longer focuses on large-scale agriculture but on livestock- keeping, the new shareholder must request a change of land use which implicates different bureaucratic steps and decisions. With the beginning of Mtanga Foods’ activity in Kisarawe in 2014 the importation of cattle was suspended by the KDC for several months.

The land deal of SBF had also led to power conflicts and mistrust between district officials and village institutions. The village leaders of Marumbo consider district officials from Kisarawe as advocates of the land deal with SBF acting against the interests of the citizens.10 The chairman of Mhaga underlines this argument: “The contract is between the investors and the DC. Villagers have no say.11” He further explains that the village council has not been informed or consulted properly: “Because there was no negotiation between the village council and the villagers and the investor. No negotiation at all.” However, in 2013 the villagers established a “task force” with the support of the NGO Action Aid Tanzania. The leaders of several villages informed the Ministry of Lands about the failure of SBF and its successors to pay the compensation for the acquired community land. It turned out that the district’s document proving the integrity of the administrative procedure had been falsified. The Ministry convoked a stakeholders’ meeting with the task force team, district officials and members of Action Aid Tanzania in order to clarify the situation and to set terms for the payment of the compensation. In January 2014, the new investor Mtanga Foods paid a compensation of 500 million Tanzanian shillings to the inhabitants of the villages where communal land was acquired.

Concluding remarks

As illustrated in the introductory remarks, several stakeholders contest accusations about land grabbing by referring tothecumbersome bureaucracy. However, more than a counterargument of dubious land acquisitions, the administrative procedures represent an original entry point to analyse the impact of state activity in land deals. The example of Sun Biofuels shows that the configurations of land deals can go beyond the dichotomy of strong investors versus weak states. State authorities on different scales intervene, monitor and negotiate the deals. During the land transactions administrative units, officials, and representatives sometimes have conflicting interests and act against each other. The analysis of land deals in Tanzania therefore goes hand in hand with an approach of unbundling the state in its different rules, scales, administrations and agents.

Wolford, Wendy, Sarturino Borras, Ruth Hall, Ian Scoones and Ben White. “Governing global land deals. The role of the state in the rush of land.” Development and Change 44, n. 2 (2013): 189-201.

Sina Schlimmer is a PhD candidate in political science at Sciences Po Bordeaux / Les Afriques dans le Monde. She is doing a research about the linkage between land deals and state-building processes in Tanzania.

In 1978 British Officials profiled the most prominent Kenyan politicians and produced a document entitled “Leading Personalities in Kenya, 1978”. Their information was certainly inspired by regular talks they had with influential civil servants, and bore the marks of the insidious tensions between ministers and provincial administrators that pertained Kenyan politics since independence. The document provided an intriguing account of Jackson Harvester Angaine, Minister for Lands and Settlements throughout President Jomo Kenyatta’s regime:

“One of the least effective Ministers, but an able politician at the grass roots level where he uses his ministerial position and Presidential support to maintain his influence among the Meru and to further his personal ends. He is a leading farmer in Meru district. He seldom attends Parliament but the President relies on him in land dealings.2”

The emphasis on Angaine’s presidential favours and his local influence invites for further research. Who was Jackson Angaine, and why was this Meru leader chosen by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta to occupy the powerful land docket after independence?

Biographical background

Jackson H. Angaine was born in 1903 under the name of Jackson Harvester M’Nchebere. “Angaine” was his father’s name, Chief M’Angaine MBE, a colonial paramount chief and prominent leader of the Njuri Ncheke, council of elders and so-called traditional government in Meru.3 Jackson’s grand-father was believed to have been a traditional Meru prophet, a Mugwe, who had foreseen the insidious conflicts in Meru brought about by the struggle of independence.4 Growing up in the colony, Jackson Angaine was educated at the Alliance High School, like many of his fellow politicians (Kipkorir, 1969; Charton, 2002).

After working as an accountant for some years, Angaine started being politically active: he was secretary for the Meru Local Native Council (1935-1948), then became chairman of the KAU local branch (1948-1952), where he also worked with Jomo Kenyatta. His involvement in the Mau Mau movement that rose at that time was always ambiguous. In 1954, when the Emergency was declared, Angaine was arrested and shortly detained by the colonial government. It remains unclear, however, whether this was primarily because he was suspected of being a Mau Mau, or because he was accused of, and prosecuted for the murder of his wife. His judgement proved inconclusive, and he was acquitted for lack of any proof5. Nevertheless, his detention contributed to establish him as a follower of the movement. His links to both Njuri Ncheke and the Mau Mau would prove very useful to boost his political career upon independence. In 1960, Angaine joined KANU (Maxon and Ofcansky, 2014).

From tactful subversion to “pro-government of late’: Angaine’s strategic politicking in Meru (1960-1962)

The political situation in Meru was particularly worrisome at that time, mostly because of Mau Mau resilience: the district was the last bastion of influential Mau Mau leaders who refused to surrender to the government, and took over the command of the Kenya Land Freedom Army (Kamunchuluh, 1975: 208; Kanogo, 1987; Kinyatti, 2008). Their resistance risked, in the government’s view, encouraging the remaining freedom fighters and released detainees to form a separated community and challenge the government’s authority.6 Local politics were further complicated by the KANU- KADU competition in the district. Colonial administrators, fearing a revival of Mau Mau activities, suspected them all of “double talk” politics, publicly denouncing terrorist oathing, yet spreading oaths to “ensure support for their party.”7 Jackson Angaine, then KANU chairman for Meru, was held responsible for such practices by the colonial authorities: “he is the source of all subversion, and indeed started the oathing campaign in the 1960 in order to defeat [KADU leader Bernard] Mate’s influence.”8 He was suspected of having a close contact with radical KANU leaders as well as with so-called ex-terrorists.

Angaine systematically denied any subversive activity, or any populist use of oathing campaigns.9 This did not end the suspicions. In May 1962, the Central Province Commissioner felt bound to ask Jomo Kenyatta to “do everything he could to convince Angaine” to stop his “tactics”.10 The situation did not improve, and finally reached the Governor’s office. The Governor himself requested Kenyatta, then president of KANU, to take urgent action to discipline the politician, quoting Kenyatta’s earlier “special plea (…) to overlook Mr. Angaine’s actions” and recalling that “it was yourself who said to me (…) that it was necessary to have discipline in the Government”.11 Kenyatta must have felt politically cornered in Angaine’s case. He did not seem to have much esteem for the latter, as colonial administrators claimed that he was “more prepared to sack him” than anyone else. He nonetheless avoided any personal interference with Angaine, leaving the sensitive task to ensure his resignation from his KANU seat in the Legislative Council to the Governor.12 Angaine did not resign, but finally “showed signs of being strongly pro-government”, a change colonial officers perceived to be of personal interest.13

Taming Njuri Ncheke to tame Meru land (1962)

Then a strong defender of the KANU party-line, Angaine found himself in opposition not only to KADU leaders in Meru, such as the educated Bernard Mate, but also with the Njuri Ncheke, the traditional government. At the heart of the competition between Angaine and Njuri Ncheke was the control of the Meru vote, as well as the control over land transactions in the district. Njuri Ncheke was a powerful institution as, in 1955, the colonial government strengthened it to ensure the Mau Mau movement would not gain ground in Meru district. Njuri Ncheke was “recognised officially by combining it with the Local Government system of the District.”14 The traditional council nominated all civil servants.15 Reinforcing the authority of Njuri Ncheke over administrative business enhanced their control over land ownership in Meru. As colonial officers noted, Njuri Ncheke held records of land transactions and “any decision which affected the laws and customs of the tribe had to be discussed by them before any adjustment could be made.”16 This was a useful device to counter emerging Mau Mau claims. Already in 1950, the Njuri Ncheke elders decided that “any Meru who took an illegal oath would be dispossessed of all tribal rights and land”. Njuri Ncheke would continue to oppose the Mau Mau throughout the decade, either by organizing ceremonies to curse the movement or, later, by organizing the rehabilitation of Mau Mau detainees in camps.17

Counter insurgency politics formalized Njuri Ncheke’s powerful influence over the Meru people. Njuri Ncheke was one of the main defenders of the integrity of the Meru land unit, which they saw as a necessary condition to maintain the cohesion of the Meru tribe against foreign intrusions, in particular that of the Kikuyu. Land shortage in Central province (the White highlands) forced many landless Kikuyu to settle in Meru, while colonial authorities were at pains to relocate them. Meru district appeared to become an ideal place, not only because land was available, but also because of the alleged similarities of Meru and Kikuyu tribal practices (Parsons, 2012). In the late 1940s, tribal integrity was a prominent concern among Meru chiefs and elders, who felt threatened by the migrations and the subsequent institutional disruptions these might cause in the district.18 Angaine’s father defended “the importance of tribal unity” and the “strengthening of the tribal institution”.19 The tribal tensions climaxed with the dramatic expulsions of Kikuyu from the Meru district.20

The beginning of the Emergency further fuelled anti-Kikuyu feelings in the district (Branch, 2009: 102-103). A few years after, in 1956, Meru people gained a decisive battle with the creation of the Meru Land Unit, which officially separated Meru people from the former Kikuyu native land unit.21 The question of Meru land, its administration and its relationship with the Kikuyu nonetheless remained very sensitive, and far from being definitively settled. Upon independence, the revision of provincial boundaries would revive the debates surrounding the specificities of the Meru tribe and its history, as well as the looming tensions with the Kikuyu tribe.

With the prospect of an end to the Emergency, however, tribal and political mathematics turned out to be even more complex. The 1959 report for the Meru district noted that “Njuri Ncheke was gradually losing its influence” invoking the rapidly widening gap between the traditional institution and the educated, loyalist elite. At a time when the colonial government was advocating the individualisation of land titles (with the Swynnerton Plan), Njuri Ncheke found itself at odds with the vast majority of the population.22 The rise of the two nationalist parties, KANU and KADU, shed light to a new type of competition that was increasingly dominated by prominent politicians, among them Jackson Angaine. Angaine’s relationship with the Njuri Ncheke has remained unclear until today. He certainly inherited the respect his own father commanded over the council, but the exact nature of his relationship with the council is unclear: was Angaine a member of Njuri Ncheke? Reverend Mugambi believes that the young Angaine was assisting his father in keeping

Mambo! Vol XIV (3) records of Njuri Ncheke’s decisions, and could not have done so had he not been initiated into the council.23 For many, the council was too influential politically for Angaine to avoid it.24 On the political front, however, Angaine differed with the council and at times even opposed it. With independence approaching, Njuri Ncheke feared that a pro-KANU, centralized government would undermine their leadership. Early 1962, the elders requested several meetings with colonial authorities so as to “seek advice on how to ensure the usual safeguards so that they would not become Kikuyu vassals after Independence”.25 As they confessed to the then Provincial Commissioner of Eastern Province F. R. Wilson, they feared their claims to authority and control over Meru land would be overlooked. According to Wilson, they specifically incriminated Angaine’s politics: At the back of all this is their horror at recent trends in Meru resulting from Jackson Angaine’s activities. A recent meeting of the Njuri was in fact broken up as a result of Jackson packing the meeting with K.A.N.U. adherents, including many Kikuyu, none of whom were members of the Njuri. (…) The Njuri are adamant, therefore, that the time has now come for them to press of the full their claims to live in a separate province or region to the Kikuyu.26

Njuri Ncheke eventually sent a delegation to the second independence conference in London in 1962 with a memorandum stating their claims. The document carefully avoided to side with any particular political party, and pre-emptively disassociated its claims from the KADU concept of regional government (also known as the “majimboism”, see Anderson, 2005).27 Behind the formalities, however, Njuri Ncheke was clearly supported by KADU leaders, in particular Bernard Mate who helped drafting the memorandum. Nevertheless, the elders only got a non-committal answer to their requests. As the conference stumbled over the irreconcilable KANU-KADU views on regionalism and as KANU would lead the new government coalition (Kyle, 1999; Anderson, 2005), Njuri Ncheke’s requests were promptly forgotten.

The establishment of a pro-KANU government in 1963 did not dissolve local competition in Meru. Angaine strove to make sure that Njuri Ncheke would not contest his leadership in particular and KANU policy in general. One of Angaine’s first move against Njuri Ncheke was to invalidate the opening of the Njuri Ncheke headquarters in Nchîrû (Meru), also referred to as “the parliament” or “the shrine”. Angaine is believed to have been responsible for bringing “six lorries of uncircumcised male adults” from Turkana to the opening (Mûgambi Mwithimbû, 2014: 81). As circumcision determines age and seniority, defines the ruling generation, and legitimates its authority, the presence of uncircumcised men was not only contrary to Njuri Ncheke’s constitution, they were meant to “desecrate” the meeting.

A few months later, before the cleansing rituals were completed, the death of the Njuri Ncheke chairman, ex-Chief M’Mûraa wa Kairangi, raised the issue of his succession. Although there was no visible tension with Angaine, M’Mûraa might have been closer to KADU leaders and Bernard Mate, his own son in law. He was eventually replaced by a prominent Meru teacher, Norman Murechia, who hailed from the “same village” as Angaine, i.e. the same division in the district.28 According to Mûgambi, Murechia was “a loyalist” chosen by Angaine, who “paid lip service to the institution for almost 40 years”. (Mûgambi Mwithimbû, ibid). As both men originated from the same location and were also age-mates, Murechia had fewer chances to raise support within Angaine’s political bastion, and was a minor political threat. Angaine was not so much trying to annihilate the traditional government as a whole, but to make sure that its leaders would not overshadow his political control of the district.

Towards the land ministry

Angaine’s best assets were, after all, his name and reputation. His public association to Njuri Ncheke, due to his father’s name, overshadowed his more insidious opposition to the council of elders. A strong defender of the KANU line, Angaine would finally be favoured by Kenyatta himself, who, as previously mentioned, overcame his ill-felling to back his politics and finally made him one of the most powerful ministers of his cabinet. By September 1963, Angaine was de facto the leading politician in Meru. The most disturbing KANU leaders and the elected Members for Meru were simply evicted so as to ease the path towards political unity.29 Colonial administrators then hoped that Angaine would remain the “recognized head” of “political figures” in the district. Kenyatta himself left him in charge of political order in Meru, when he went to London for the negotiations of independence.30 Upon independence, Angaine was appointed Minister for Lands and Settlement.

Why would Kenyatta appoint a Meru politician as minister for lands? One element of the answer points to the dramatic history of tribal relations between Meru and Kikuyu people dating back to the 1930s as previously mentioned (Parsons, 2012). Kikuyu politicians were strongly involved in this debate, as the Kikuyu Central Association’s most radical voices such as Senior Chief Koinange ( later-to- be Kenyatta’s father in law) spoke against tribal mingling and assimilation, and against those who defended a more flexible understanding of tribal identity (Parsons, ibid.). A KCA representative himself, writing a history of the Kikuyu tribal identity, Kenyatta must have been aware of these virulent debates surrounding the Kikuyu migrations and rights over land in other districts. In his book Facing Mount Kenya, he specifically spoke about the importance of maintaining the unity and cohesion of the Kikuyu tribe. It could be that he had learned about the Njuri Ncheke elders, who were supported by the colonial authority to put an end to Kikuyu migrations.

Upon independence the land issue in Meru stood in clear continuity with the past Kikuyu-Meru tribal disputes. There was a need to decide whether Kikuyu migrants’ land claims would be recognized. The Njuri Ncheke’s memorandum for the protection of Meru tribal land upon independence shows that the tensions did not cease. The re-negotiations of provincial boundaries in 1962 gave a vivid illustration of the persisting inter-tribal mistrust (Hornsby, 2012: 73-4).

Kenyatta might have wanted to secure a grand Kikuyu land unit stretching all over the Mount Kenya tribes. Appointing Angaine as Minister for Lands, he ensured that neither the Njuri Ncheke, nor the resilient Mau Mau fighters in the district would challenge his leadership. Angaine was a convenient political pawn. His ability to control Njuri Ncheke or to maintain his Mau Mau aura was dependent on his political achievement, and hence, on his direct access to presidential favours. The establishment of a centralized government stifled both Njuri Ncheke’s and Mau Mau’s claims to land. The latter had no choice but to rely on Angaine, KANU chairman in Meru and Minister for Lands and Settlement, to request and even to buy land.

Bibliography

Anderson, David. “‘Yours in Struggle for Majimbo’: Nationalism and the Party Politics of Decolonisation in Kenya, 1955 to 1964.” Journal of Contemporary History 40,3 (2005): 547-564.

Anaïs Angelo is a Ph.D. researcher at the department of History and Civilization, European University Institute (Florence, Italy). Her main areas of interest include Kenyan postcolonial political history, biography writing, and African presidentialism.